
Glass 


T ! £/ 


Book 


, 


PRESENTED BY 



fileon Club Ipublicattone 



l^umbeif @ne 



»»»»*»»»*»»*»♦» + «■****»»*»»» + ******** »»»»»»»» 



Zk life ano Mings 



John Filson 



first ftistorian of ffientucftp 



»»»»»**********»***+*++**+*»***♦»**********+** * 



»? 



IReuben S. Shtrrett 




JOHN FILSON 
From a miniature in an old book that once belonged to him, 

NOW IN POSSESSION OP REUBEN T. DURRETT, OF LOUISVILLE, Ky. 



\o-w cXjuat y4j^j&acUw-tA/i,M/>. 






John Filson, 

The First Historian of Kentucky. 



AN ACCOUNT OF 



HIS LIFE AND IVRITINGS, 



JJrinripallu. from Original ©nurtcs. 



PREPARED FOR THE 



FILSON CLUB 



And Read at its Meeting, in Louisville, Ky., June 26, 1884, by 

REUBEN T. DURRETT, 

PRESIDENT OF THE CLUB. 



LOUISVILLE, KY: 

JBrtnteD for the jftifion Club 

BY JOHN P. MORTON & CO. 

1884. 



F45J 



(£op$jrigl}icb 

^ig Jleubfiit ©. -purrelL 

1BS4. 






& 



PREFACE. 

-^^..4, — 

N the 15th of May, 1884, Richard H. Collins, 
William Chenault, John Mason Brown, Basil 
W. Duke, George M. Davie, James S. Pirtle, Thomas W. 
Bullitt, Alexander P. Humphrey, Thomas Speed, and 
Reuben T. Durrett organized the Filson Club, in Louis- 
ville, Ky. , for the purpose of collecting and preserving the 
history of Kentucky, and especially those perishing scraps 
of history and biography which have never been published. 
The organization limited its membership to persons known 
to take an interest in historic studies and to be capable of 
so arranging and presenting the information they may 
obtain as to be useful to others. The Club was named 
in remembrance of John Filson, the first historian of 
Kentucky, and Mr. Durrett, who was made its President, 
was requested to prepare and read at its next meeting an 
account of the life and writings of the author whose name 
had been assumed. This request was complied with, and 
the article so prepared and read at the meeting, June 26, 
1884, elaborated with an appendix and embellished with a 
likeness of Filson, a specimen of his chirography, and his 
map of Kentucky, is here published as the first contribution 
of the Filson Club to the historic literature of the State. 

THOMAS SPEED, Secretary 

Louisville, Ky., June 26, 1884 



John piLSON, 



THE FIRST HISTORIAN OF KENTUCKY. 



2Uji> SGittle 2£ttotan about Hf'xlaan. 



NE hundred years have now elapsed since John 
Filson published what has been regarded as the 
first history of Kentucky, and indeed the first, in English, 
of any portion of our vast domain west of the Alleghany 
Mountains. During this long period all that has been 
made known concerning this author and his work might 
be told in an ordinary paragraph. Volumes have been 
published about Daniel Boone, the hunter and Indian- 
fighter, but scarcely a page concerning Filson — his first 
biographer — who did more than any one else to make the 
name of Boone immortal. Beginning with the first pub- 
lished notice of Filson, written for the Cincinnati Direc- 
tory of 1 8 19, probably by Nathan Guilford, all that is there 
told concerning him is that he bargained, in 1788, with 
Denman and Patterson, for one-third of the ground on 



5 John Filson: 

which Cincinnati was afterward built, projected a town 
on the site by the name of Losantiville, and made an 
excursion into the country in which he was killed by the 
Indians. To this brief account Burnet's Letters, pub- 
lished by the Ohio Historical Society in 1839, added that 
Filson had been a surveyor, and Perkins' Annals of the 
West, in 1846, that he had been a school-master. Nothing 
further was contributed by any author with whom I am 
familiar until Ranck, in his History of Lexington, in 1872, 
added that he was teaching school there in 1782, writing 
the narrative of Boone soon after the battle of the Blue 
Licks, and exerting himself in behalf of the Transylvania 
Seminary in 1788. The few facts concerning Filson, thus 
scattered through different publications, were gathered 
together by Richard H. Collins in his History of Ken- 
tucky, in 1874, with additional particulars about the time 
and place of his death and the republications of his book in 
Paris and London, the whole presented in the first form of 
a narrative or biographical sketch that had been attempted. 
Kentuckians who take an interest in the history of their 
State can hardly rest satisfied with such a meager account 
of their first historian and author; and especially must 
this be true with the members of the Club which has 
assumed the name of Filson, and which was organized 
for the purpose of collecting and preserving the history 



His Life and Writings. j 

of the State, particularly the fragmentary and perishing 
parts thereof. In response, therefore, to the desire of the 
Filson Club, that the first contribution to its archives 
should be more knowledge of the author whose name it 
bears, I have collected and herewith commit to its keep- 
ing, in addition to what has been previously published, 
such information concerning him and his writings as I 
have been able to gather from the words of some who 
knew him in life and others who knew of him, and from 
public records and private papers yet spared by time. 

<Ube Okauufatber of iFtlson. 

Among the English-speaking families who succeeded 
the Swedes and the Dutch in the rich valley of the beau- 
tiful Brandywine, a small stream in Southeastern Pennsyl- 
vania, made famous by the victory of General Howe over 
General Washington in the early stages of the American 
Revolution, were the Filsons. Here John Filson, the 
grandfather of the historian, on his little farm of two 
hundred acres, in the township of East Fallowfield, died in 
1 75 1. In accordance with the law of primogeniture, then 
in force in the colonies, he bequeathed his lands to his 
oldest son, Davison, to the exclusion of his younger sons 
and daughters. 



8 yohn Filson: 

Slje Iffattftr of Wilson. 

Davison Filson, the father of the historian, was a thrifty 
farmer, and added to the number of acres he had inher- 
ited. At his death, in 1776, he left money in his purse, 
debts against his neighbors, grain in his barn, crops grow- 
ing in his fields, and stock running upon his pastures. 
Before his death he deeded to his sons, John and Robert, 
the lands he intended them to have, and by will provided 
for his six other children. Independent of his lands, his 
personal property was valued by the appraisers appointed 
by the court at about ,£300, which, though insignificant 
in comparison with some of the Virginia estates on the 
James, was quite a sum for an humble farmer on the 
Brandywine. 

Slj? Itrth. of % l^iatortan. 

John Filson, the historian, the second son of Davison 
Filson, was born and raised on the Brandywine farm; but 
no record has been found to fix the exact date of his 
birth. In the ninth volume of the second series of the 
Pennsylvania Archives the marriage of Davison Filson to 
Agnes Boggs is given, in the First Presbyterian Church 
of Philadelphia, as of the date of February 9, 1768. John 



His Life and Writings. g 

Filson, the historian, could hardly have been born of this 
marriage, if the date is rightly given. It would make him 
at most only about eight years old when he received 
deeds from his father for lands, and not to exceed sixteen 
when he published his history of Kentucky. Either the 
date is wrongly given, or the historian came of a pre- 
vious marriage. In the will of John Filson, the grand- 
father of the historian, which bears the date of September 3, 
1748, a grandson named John is mentioned, and to him 
bequeathed a Bible. This grandson was probably John 
Filson, the historian, and if so, his birth can not be fixed 
earlier than 1747. Some books known to have belonged 
to the historian, and now in my possession, have the sig- 
nature of John Filson on the seventeenth and forty-sev- 
enth pages. It has been the habit of some owners of 
books to write their names upon particular pages, the fig- 
ures of which indicate the date of purchase, others the 
time of the owner's arriving at the age of twenty-one, etc. 
It was, possibly, the peculiarity of Filson to write his name 
on two separate pages, the figures of which, when joined 
together, would represent the year of his birth. Thus 
17 and 47, when brought together, made 1747 as the year 
of his birth, which, though entirely conjectural, is not 
inconsistent with the will of his grandfather. 



IO John Filson: 

Sjta lEarlg ICtft an \\\t Iranogfatttf. 

Previous to his coming to Kentucky, at the probable 
age of six and thirty, but little is known of Filson. 
Through some of the Kentucky pioneers with whom he 
was thrown after coming to this region, something has 
come down in tradition concerning his early life in Penn- 
sylvania. The son and grandson of humble farmers in 
the valley of the Brandywine, he passed his child- 
hood, his youth and his early manhood in the pursuits 
common to the agriculturists of his neighborhood. He 
plowed the ground, cultivated the crop, harvested the 
grain, mowed the meadow, and rode to mill on the bag 
of corn to be ground into meal, as did other boys. In 
1784, when Isaac Hite was erecting his mill on Goose 
Creek, above Louisville, Filson was present, and told the 
following anecdote on himself, which the late Abram Hite 
used to repeat as a souvenir of what the boys did in 
early times: On one occasion, while on his way to mill 
on the Brandywine, Filson avoided the usual ford for the 
purpose of seeing new sights, and attempted to cross the 
water at another point where the depth was unknown. 
When near the middle of the stream his horse suddenly 
plunged into water too deep to be waded, and had to 
swim for the shore. The bag of corn left the back of 



His Life and Writings. \ \ 

the horse as the water rose over it, and was lost in the 
current. Filson, however, held fast to the mane of the 
horse, and, dangling his legs on the surface like streamers 
from a masthead, was safely borne to the shore. The loss 
of the bag of grain he found somewhat serious, when he 
returned to the empty meal-barrel at home with nothing 
to make the family hoe-cake. However, the children were 
put on short rations until the next day, when another 
bag was sent to mill. It was not sent by John this time, 
however, but by his brother Robert, while John engaged 
in the more disagreeable work of hoeing the corn in the 
field. 

%\& Education. 

In addition to the neighborhood schools of the valley 
of the Brandywine, Filson is said to have had the advan- 
tage of some instruction from Rev. Samuel Finley, who 
once had an academy in that vicinity, and afterward 
became President of New Jersey College. The writings of 
Filson, though occasionally marred by serious faults of 
composition, indicate that he was taught at school some- 
thing more than simple reading, writing, and arithmetic. 
He is credited with having composed the word Losanti- 
ville, the name first given to the present city of Cincin- 
nati. This name, being made up of the initial letter L, 



I 2 yohn Filson : 

for Licking, the Latin word os meaning mouth, the Greek 
anti meaning opposite to, and the French ville, meaning 
city — all, together, signifying the city opposite the mouth 
of Licking — indicates that he had some knowledge of the 
Greek, Latin, and French languages. He is known to 
have understood the French language, and to have used 
it to advantage in his intercourse with the French in the 
Illinois country. He also proposed to teach French in a 
school that he projected at Lexington, Kentucky, in 1788. 

iftH Hani of a iHUttarg Iwnro. 

What part, if any, Filson took in the great struggle 
for American independence is not known. No military 
epithet seems to have been attached to his name. On 
the rolls of none of the companies engaged in the colo- 
nial or revolutionary wars has his name been found. The 
name of Samuel Filson appears as a private in the com- 
pany of Captain Bond, in 1759. Robert Filson was a 
lieutenant in the corps of six hundred and fifty-two vol- 
unteers called for by the Committee of Safety in 1776. 
George Filson, a private in Captain Wilson's company, 
was wounded at the battle of Trenton, and Thomas Fil- 
son was a sergeant in Captain Semple's company in 1780. 
The Filsons do not seem, therefore, to have been of the 



His Life and Writings. ig 

non-combatant class, and yet we fail to find the name of 
the historian on the company lists of his day. It is pos- 
sible that he may have been engaged in teaching school, 
and in this useful vocation was released from the neces- 
sity which called others into the field. He was a sur- 
veyor also, and in the patriotic use of the ferule and 
compass may have reposed in comparative quiet from the 
throes of the tremendous military struggle around him. 

%t ffipabpa ppttttoglhattta for 2Cpnturkg. 

If, however, his occupation gave him rest and immu- 
nity during the revolutionary war, he was destined to six 
short years of activity and danger when that struggle 
ended. Scarcely had the thunders of the revolutionary 
guns been silenced, when, borne upon the tide of land 
speculation which was sweeping from all directions toward 
Kentucky, he made his way from the Brandywine to the 
Elkhorn, in the midst of what he justly described as "the 
most extraordinary country upon which the sun had ever 
shone." Over the mountains from Chester to Pittsburgh, 
and down the Ohio to Limestone, and through the dark 
forests to Lexington, he made his way with the enthu- 
siasm of the adventurer who stops not at difficulties or 
dangers in his path to the new "land of promise." 



i a "John Filson: 

iipfl Arrttral in Xratitrkg, anil lEntrtea of £ian&. 

The date of Filson's first arrival in Kentucky is not 
known with precision. Mr. Ranck, in his history of Lex- 
ington, has him teaching school in that place in 1782, 
and writing the adventures of Daniel Boone after the 
return of the old pioneer from the Chillicothe expedition, 
in the fall of that year. The first recorded evidence of 
his presence in Kentucky was his entry of lands a year 
later. On the 19th of December, 1783, he entered in 
the books of Colonel Thomas Marshall, then surveyor of 
Fayette County, two tracts of land, one for 4,922 and the 
other for 5,000 acres, and on the following day another 
tract of 2,446}^ acres. These entries were made on treas- 
ury warrants assigned to Filson by Clem Moore and John 
Boyd, and the 12,368^ acres thus obtained, in the aggre- 
gate had not probably cost the locator more than that 
number of cents. Virginia had offered her public lands 
for the paper money she had put in circulation during 
the revolutionary war, and long before' Filson came to 
Kentucky to locate these lands, this currency had depre- 
ciated as a thousand of paper for one of silver. Besides 
these twelve thousand and odd acres in Fayette, Filson had 
1,500 acres in Jefferson County, which he had purchased of 
Squire Boone, and other possessions in the Illinois coun- 
try which I have not been able to ascertain on account 
of the burning of the records at Vincennes in 18 14. 



His Life and Writings. 15 

^ia JTirat uJboitnbt of a i^fltoru. of ICrnturkg. 

It is probable that Filson came to Kentucky for the 
purpose of acquiring lands on warrants brought with 
him. When he once got here and examined the rich 
country and mingled with the hospitable pioneers and 
saw the tide of immigration constantly flowing in from 
all quarters, he shrewdly enough foresaw a great country 
here in the future, and concluded to write a book and draw 
a map that might help to people it more rapidly. He, 
himself, in his preface to his work, says that he pub- 
lished it "solely to inform the world of the happy climate 
and plentiful soil of this favoured region." Filson, how- 
ever, could not have been ignorant of the fact that his 
own lands, as well as others, would be increased in value 
in proportion to the number of immigrants that his book 
might draw to this region. 

i£oto Ije (gathered ^Information for %x& look and Map. 

Although the year 1783 was not entirely free from 
Indian depredations, the terrible damages they had re- 
ceived in their own homes beyond the Ohio, the year 
previous, at the hands of General Clark, rendered them 
comparatively harmless. Filson had access enough to 



1 6 yohn Filson: 

such pioneers as Daniel Boone, Levi Todd, James Har- 
rod, Christopher Greenup, John Cowan, and William Ken- 
nedy, all of whom he mentions with gratitude, to gather 
the needed information for his book, and could go over 
the country to make surveys and observations for his 
map without the dangers that beset the forest in previous 
and subsequent years. He has come down through tradi- 
tion as exceedingly persistent in his searches for informa- 
tion, so much so that it was understood among the pio- 
neers that the only way to get rid of his inquiries was 
to answer them. The proverb was, he could ask more 
questions than everybody and answer fewer than any- 
body. 

if 10 Sank and Mnp i|JubltBh*i> at itffiertttt parra. 

In 1784 his work was ready for publication. There 
was then no printing press west of the Alleghany Moun- 
tains, and the author had to make his way up the Ohio 
to Pittsburgh, and across the mountains to Philadelphia 
and Wilmington, to find publishers. He took the man- 
uscript of his book to Wilmington, in the State of Dela- 
ware, where it was printed by James Adams. The draw- 
ing of his map was taken to Philadelphia, where it was 
engraved by H. D. Pursell and printed by T. Rook. 
Both the map and the book bear the date 1784, and 
have now reached the venerable age of an hundred years. 



His Life and Writings. \j 

GlijarartrriuttrH of iFilamt'B fHajj. 

This map by Filson was the first ever made of Ken- 
tucky, and forms an important part of his history. It 
was a vast improvement upon the general maps of Char- 
levoix, Evans, Hutchins, Pownall, and others, which had 
preceded it and given a very inadequate idea of the 
country on the Ohio River. It presented the three coun- 
ties of Jefferson, Fayette and Lincoln, into which the 
district of Kentucky was then divided, and gave the to- 
pography of the country — its rivers and creeks, its moun- 
tains and hills, its prairies and canebrakes, its barrens 
and forests, its mineral, salt and medical springs, and 
other characteristics, with wonderful accuracy for the early 
period at which the work was done. The only towns 
then in the district were Louisville and Bardstown in 
Jefferson County; Harrodsburg, Boonesborough, and Dan- 
ville in Lincoln, and Lexington, Leestown, and Green- 
ville in Fayette, all of which are laid down in their 
proper places. The two last named have long since dis- 
appeared and passed from the memory of the living. 
They are placed, by this map, on the north side of the 
Kentucky River, a short distance below where Frankfort 
now stands. Leestown was an important resort for the 
hunters and improvers north of the Kentucky River; 

3 



j8 yohn Filson: 

and the main road from Louisville to Lexington passed 
through it about a mile below Frankfort. This road had 
been originally made by the buffaloes, and crossed the 
Kentucky River at one of the few places along its ex- 
tended course where it was practicable to make the pas- 
sage. A striking feature of this map is the number of 
forts laid down upon it and indicating the circumscribed 
life of the pioneers. In the triangular space bounded 
by a line drawn from the Falls of the Ohio to the great 
bend of the Licking, in which the battle of the Blue 
Licks was fought, thence southwardly, through Boones- 
borough to the old English station toward the head 
waters of Dick's River, and thence through Bardstown 
and back to Louisville, more than fifty fortifications are 
exhibited. In these forts the thirty thousand inhabitants 
of Kentucky were then shut up, something like cattle 
in pens, for protection against the wily savage. There 
was no going out from the pickets which surrounded 
these block-houses during what was called the Indian 
season without danger. The crop was cultivated within 
range of the rifles of the fort, some keeping guard while 
others hoed the corn and weeded the vegetables. The 
roads, first made by the buffaloes and adopted by the 
pioneers, are laid down with such accuracy that the po- 
sition of the old historic places may be ascertained at 



His Life and Writings. ig 

this distant day by measurements from known objects 
whose positions have not changed. On the old roads 
leading out from Louisville to Lexington and to Bards- 
town are the fortified stations known by the names of 
Spring, Floyd, Low Dutch, Sturgis, Linn, Sullivan, and 
Boone, just where they stood an hundred years ago, with 
a scale on the map to show how far they were from 
the Falls and the distances of one from the other. On 
this map, too, are located the few dwelling houses of 
our pioneers that stood outside of the pickets of the 
forts. The Hite house in Jefferson, the Marshall, the 
Wilkinson, the Todd, the Johnson, and the Boone in 
Fayette, each appears in its proper place and may now 
be traced to its location by the descendants of the his- 
toric characters who occupied it in 1784. Between Salt 
and Green rivers is laid down that mysterious forma- 
tion which our forefathers called the Barrens, because 
they found it without the forest trees which covered 
other portions of the country. To the east appeared the 
warriors' path leading from Cumberland Gap to the 
Shawnee town at the mouth of the Scioto, and a little 
southeast of it the trace that Boone marked out for the 
adventurers of Transylvania in 1775. That wonderful 
bend of the Ohio opposite to the Great Miami, in which 
the huge bones of the mastodon were found, and that 



20 jfohn Filson: 

no less striking curve of the Licking, in which the bat- 
tle of the Blue Licks was fought, may be examined as 
specimens of the accuracy with which the rivers are 
laid down. Take it all together, this map of the Dis- 
trict of Kentucky in 1784 was a masterly work to have 
been produced more from conversations with the pio- 
neers than from the use of the compass and chain. In 
this day of triangulation, etc., for charts, it is incompre- 
hensible how such men as Boone and Todd and Har- 
rod could take a hunt up and down a long river and 
then give such an account of it as to enable a surveyor 
to lay it down upon paper with its windings and peculi- 
arities so as to distinguish it from all other streams 
and give it a fixed place in the geographical knowledge 
of the country. This, however, was done, and done so 
well that the subsequent maps of Kentucky by Barker, 
Imlay, Crevcoeur and others have been but little more 
than reproductions of Filson's map with the additional 
counties and towns established since it was made. The 
early history of the State of Kentucky can not be prop- 
erly understood without this map, and it must forever 
remain the best authority for the topography of the State 
one hundred years ago. 

Filson knew well enough that his map of Kentucky 
was an excellent work, far in advance of anything of 



His Life and Writings. 2 1 

the kind previously attempted. He was proud of it and 
dedicated it to the Congress of the United States and 
to General Washington. In the just pride of his accom- 
plishment, however, he did not forget those who had 
given him their aid in the good work. At the top of 
his map he drew a scroll, and in it placed the following 
inscription : 

While this work shall live let this inscription remain a monument of the 
gratitude of the author to Col'ls Dan'l Boone, Levi Todd, and Jas. Harrod; 
Capt. Christ. Greenup, Jno. Cowan, and Wm. Kennedy, Esq'rs, of Kentucke, 
for the distinguished assistance with which they have honored him in its com- 
position, and a testimony that it has received the approbation of those whom 
he justly esteems the best qualified to judge of its merit. 



The names thus presented on the scroll of Filson show 
us the kind of men with whom he associated when he came 
to Kentucky, and indicate the sources of the information 
which made up his book and his map. Daniel Boone, Levi 
Todd, James Harrod, Christopher Greenup, John Cowan, 
and William Kennedy are the six who make up the roll of 
honor. They were among the earliest and most efficient of 
those who laid the foundation of our Commonwealth. They 
were soldiers, statesmen, citizens, fathers, neighbors, and 
friends peculiarly suited to the conditions in which their 



22 yohn Filson: 

lot was cast. Boone appears first on the list, as well he 
might, for he was the first of them to see the fair land of 
Kentucky, and, like another Adam in the garden of Eden, 
to give names to the waters and lands which spread out in 
their wild majesty before him. Levi Todd, the cultured 
pioneer whose careful habits and beautiful chirography 
made him the first clerk of the first court ever held in 
Kentucky and afterward first clerk of the county of Fay- 
ette, appears second on Filson's list. Filson spent consid- 
erable of his time at the house of Todd, near Lexington, 
and there did much of his writing and drawing for his 
book and map. He next mentions the name of James 
Harrod, after whom Harrodsburg, claimed to be the first 
settlement in Kentucky, was named. Harrod was a woods- 
man almost as famous as Boone, and remembered the 
country so well as he saw it that the information he im- 
parted was well suited for the purposes of Filson. He 
had one of those kind and generous hearts, moreover, that 
never grew weary of the inquiries made of him for what 
he knew. Like Filson, Harrod mysteriously disappeared 
from the circle of the living while exploring the wild 
woods, and no one knows the manner of his death be- 
yond the conjecture that he fell at the hands of one who 
enticed him into the wilderness ostensibly to show him 
the mystic silver mine of Swift, but in reality to murder 



His Life and Writings. 27 

him. Christopher Greenup is next mentioned by Fil- 
son, who, although fourth on the list, afterward became 
the most renowned of them all. He first became clerk 
of the District Court of Kentucky; next a member of 
Congress; then clerk of the Senate, and finally Governor 
of the State. Filson next mentions John Cowan, who 
antedates them all, except Boone, in his coming to Ken- 
tucky. Cowan was among the first surveyors at the Falls 
of the Ohio, in 1773, and saw Captain Bullitt run the lines 
of the Connelly tract, on which the great city of Louisville 
was afterward built. He then selected for himself a tract 
of land on the Ohio opposite to Twelve-Mile Island, above 
Louisville, where he reared a cabin and raised a crop of 
corn the following year. In spite of all his toils about 
Harrodsburg and other places, he claimed this land in 
Jefferson County as his settlement in Kentucky, and secured 
four hundred acres for this right, with a pre-emption of 
another thousand adjoining. He was a woodsman, scarcely 
inferior to Boone or Harrod, and had a memory from 
which nothing escaped that he had ever seen or heard. 
In the autumn of life he was a frequenter of the place 
of my birth and early years, where he told again 
and again his stories of pioneer life to willing listeners 
who forgot them not but repeated them and sent them 
on their way to our times. Some of these stories con- 



2 a yohn Filson: 

cerned Filson, and have been embodied in this article. 
Lastly, the name of William Kennedy appears in the list 
of Filson. Kennedy was a member of the second and 
third conventions which met at Danville, in 1785 and 
1787, for the purpose of separating Kentucky from Vir- 
ginia, and when the new State was erected was one of 
the electors from Mercer County for choosing senators 
under the first constitution. He was one of the earliest 
comers to Kentucky, and a woodsman of marvelous tact 
and prudence. With such men as these to impart infor- 
mation, we need not wonder that Filson should have 
made such a map of Kentucky as he produced in 1784. 
There was scarcely a river or creek in the whole district 
along which one or more of them had not been hunting 
or exploring, and when the individual information of each 
was combined into a whole, Filson had a knowledge of 
the country both vast and reliable. Hence, a map was 
produced that was the wonder of the day, and that must 
forever remain the only picture of our State an hundred 
years ago. It is the map not only of Filson, the accom- 
plished surveyor and cartographer, but of Boone and 
Todd and Harrod and Greenup and Cowan and Ken- 
nedy, the best informed pioneer woodsmen of their day. 



His Life and Writings. 2 c 

SKbliorjrattbir Error abnitf Jffilaon'a ffltxp. 

Quite a dispute arose some years ago as to whether 
a map of Kentucky accompanied the original history of 
Filson. The exceeding great rarity of the map and its 
repeated absence from the few copies of the book that 
got into the hands of sellers induced them to account 
for its want by asserting that it had never existed. This, 
too, in the face of the statement more than once made 
in the book itself, that it was accompanied by a map, 
and in spite of the equally emphatic announcement of 
Parraud, in the French edition of 1785, that he had 
translated the map as well as the book. When Geo. 
A. Leavitt & Co., of New York, sold the Murphy copy 
last March they followed the example of their predeces- 
sors and boldly made the following announcement in 
their catalogue: "It is proper to state that although the 
title calls for a map, none appears to have been pub- 
lished; when found it is usually supplied from the 
French translation." This was too grave an error to 
have been committed by parties professing such superior 
knowledge of the books they offered as to herald them 
with an elaborate descriptive catalogue. If they had 
simply said the book they offered for sale had not the 
map and they could not account for its absence, it 

4 



26 yohn Filson: 

would have been well enough; but to presume to say 
the map was never published was going decidedly too 
far for truth. In 1882, when Col. John Mason Brown 
delivered his centennial address in commemoration of the 
battle of the Blue Licks, it was his wish to have the 
oration, when published, accompanied by a facsimile of 
the original map of Kentucky by Filson. He attempted 
to find an original from which a copy could be obtained, 
with the following result published in a note to the 
pamphlet containing his oration: 

The original edition of Filson's work was published at Wilmington in 1784, 
with a certificate under the hands of Daniel Boone, Levi Todd, and James Har- 
rod. It also purported to contain a "Map of Kentucke." 

It is strange that no copy of the edition of 1784 can be found containing 
the map referred to, though very diligent search has been made. I have to 
thank Mr. A. R. Spofford, Librarian of the Congressional Library at Washington, 
Mr. Lloyd P. Smith, of the Philadelphia Public Library, Mr. James L- Whitney, 
of the Boston Public Library, Mr. Lyman C. Draper, the veteran collector and 
historical writer, and Robert Clarke, Esq., of Cincinnati, for their kindness in 
searching out this matter. 

The better opinion seems to be that Filson did not publish his map with 
his book, but made it public afterward. It is hardly possible otherwise to account 
for the absence of the map from every known copy of the edition of 1784. 

Yet, on the other hand, Reuben T. Durrett, Esq., of Louisville, Kentucky, 
is very positive in his recollection that the map referred to was in the copy of 
Filson which he presented to the Public Library of Louisville, Kentucky, and 
which has since been stolen. 



His Life and Writings. 27 

The high authorities thus arrayed against the map 
in the note of Colonel Brown's pamphlet had not, like 
Leavitt & Co., denied the existence of the map, but had 
suggested its publication at a time different from the 
book. In this they were mistaken, because the book 
and map both appeared in 1784; but the whole dis- 
pute was calculated to produce the impression that I 
had been mistaken in the statement that I had a book 
and map together. I myself knew that I could not be 
mistaken, because I had made copious notes from my 
map before giving it to the Public Library, and those 
very notes furnished the information which I have used 
in this article concerning this map. The weight of evi- 
dence forming the "better opinion," as Colonel Brown's 
note expressed it, was against me, however, and I deter- 
mined to find one of these maps if it could be done. 
I had understood that William M. Darlington, Esq., of 
Pittsburgh, had one, and I wrote to him about it but got 
no answer. Finally, I examined an old catalogue which 
I had of the maps in the library of Harvard Univer- 
sity, published in 1831, and there found, on page 199, 
such a description of the map in question as to leave 
no doubt that it was the one I wanted. I communi- 
cated my discovery to Colonel Brown, who was person- 
ally acquainted with Justin Winsor, Esq., the accomplished 



28 yohn Filson: 

librarian, to whom he wrote about the map. Mr. Winsor 
promptly answered that the map was there. I then 
determined to place myself right about its existence by 
securing a facsimile copy to accompany this article. Mr. 
Winsor accommodatingly placed the original in the hands 
of the Heliotype Printing Company, of Boston, who have 
furnished the photo-lithographic reproduction which here 
vindicates me and resurrects the buried work. It is possi- 
ble that the printing of Filson's book at Wilmington, and 
his map at Philadelphia, caused a separation in the first 
place, and furnishes a reason for the books offered for 
sale, as well as others, being found without maps. The 
map, moreover, was sold by Filson separately from the 
book, as shown by an account of sales made out by him 
now in my possession. 

Analyttral (Stotltne of Wilson's ipBtorg. 

The book of Filson, as it came from the press of James 
Adams, was a quaint little leather-bound octavo of one 
hundred and eighteen pages. It had a title-page, an ad- 
vertisement, and a preface with as much formality as if it 
had been a volume of a thousand or more pages; and what 
is odd enough, its title-page was quite out of proportion 
to the matter which followed. It reminded one of a huge 



,>.^ 



>v^^ 




"jus ^j^k 



Sca/ecf/OMlYes to anu 



TA<J?rrant of t/re C/u'o u /» tony 
Barf Modem fe.exee/i/- tfit Rapid*. . 






■PMa^'Enjr^W fy S/,„ryZ>.PujM. %&<»/«/ /y TlXr^yer Mr vdaffor IJ S 4 . 



His Life and Writings. 20 

portico in front of a small house, or a great door leading 
into a diminutive apartment. When we take up the tenth 
great volume of Bancroft, and find upon the title-page the 
simple inscription, "History of the United States from the 
Discovery of the American Continent," we can but be 
struck with the following voluminous inscription copied, 
word for word, from Filson's little book: 



DISCOVERY, SETTLEMENT, 
and Present State of 



KENTUCKE: 



An Essay towards the Topography, and Nat- 
ural History of that important Country: 



AN APPENDIX, 



I. The Adventures of Col. Daniel Boon, one of the first 
Settlers, comprehending every important Occurrence 
in the political History of that Province. 
II. The Minutes of the Piankashaw Council, held at Post 
St. Vincennes , April 15, 1784. 

III. An Account of the Indian Nations inhabiting within 
the Limits of the Thirteen United States, their Manners 
and Customs, and Reflections on their Origin. 

IV. The Stages and Distances between Philadelphia and 
the Falls of the Ohio; from Pittsburg to Pcnsacola and 
several other Places. 

The Whole illustrated by a newandaccurateMAPof AWiracfo 
and the Country adjoining, drawn from actual surveys. 



By JOHN FILSON. 



Wilmington: Printed by James Adams, 1784. 



oq John Filson: 

SJjp A&foritHMtwnt and iJrefare. 

If it was necessary, however, to have in the title-page 
anything more than Filson's account of Kentucky, it must 
be conceded that what the author gave fairly indicated the 
singular medley which followed. After the title-page came, 
under the head of "Advertisement," a card signed by Dan- 
iel Boone, Levi Todd, and James Harrod, certifying that 
they had revised the author's work, and recommending 
it to the public "as an exceeding good performance, con- 
taining as accurate a description of our country as we 
think can possibly be given." Then followed the author's 
preface, in which he acknowledged himself indebted to 
Colonels Boone, Todd, and Harrod, and especially to Colonel 
Boone, for the assistance they had given him, and in which 
he makes the remarkable declaration that his book was not 
published for lucrative motives, "but solely to inform the 
world of the happy climate and plentiful soil of this favoured 
region." The preface of Filson and the advertisement of 
Boone, Todd, and Harrod suggest a little four-handed mu- 
tual admiration society. 

"ultj? Itarobwu, ^rttlment, and iPurrljaap of 
2Centurkg." 

Next under the above head come four pages in which 
are briefly given the supposed discovery of the country, 
the purchase of the soil from the Indians by Henderson 



His Life and Writings. <? \ 

& Co. south of the Kentucky River, and by Donaldson 
north of it, and the adventures of those who first settled 
upon it. In this short sketch, however, are serious errors, 
which have had their influence in misleading public opin- 
ion as to what may be called the discovery of Kentucky. 
Filson makes James McBride to have been the discoverer 
of Kentucky in 1754, when he cut his name on a tree at 
the mouth of the Kentucky River. McBride was in no 
sense the discoverer of Kentucky. The French, at a much 
earlier date, used the Ohio River as a channel of commu- 
nication between their settlements in Canada and those 
on the Mississippi, and French traders as well as English 
were on the Ohio and along the Kentucky shore, if not 
upon the inland rivers, long before the date of McBride. 
The Duke de Mirepoix, in a communication to the British 
Ministry in 1755, stated that the detachment of French 
troops sent against the Chickasaw Indians in 1739 went 
by way of the Ohio River; and in the great history of New 
France, by Charlevoix, the sixth volume contains a map of 
this country in 1744, on which the Falls of the Ohio are 
laid down, and above them a place designated at which 
the bones of the elephant were found in 1729. Of course 
this place was the Big Bone Lick, and the bones those 
of the mastodon afterward supposed to be first found by 
later discoverers. John Howard crossed the mountains 



^2 yohn Filson: 

from Virginia and sailed down the Ohio to the Missis- 
sippi in a canoe in 1742, where he was captured by the 
Indians. In 1750 Thomas Walker passed through the 
eastern portion of Kentucky, and a French map, published 
by Robert de Vaugondy in 1755, shows "Walker's Etabliss 
Anglois," on a branch of the Cumberland River, in 1750. 
In 1 75 1 Christopher Gist passed through Kentucky on his 
way to North Carolina, and his journal, published in Pow- 
nall's North America in 1776, shows the route he took. 
Indeed, so far from McBride's being entitled to the honor 
of discovering Kentucky in 1754, he is no more entitled 
to that glory than Moscoso, who sailed along its shore 
from the mouth of the Ohio to the Tennessee line in 1543; 
or LaSalle, who went from the headwaters of the Alle- 
gheny to the Falls of the Ohio in 1669-70. In 1727 Dan- 
iel Coxe published at London a book descriptive of the 
province of Carolana, in North America, in which he sets 
forth the travels and discoveries of an Englishman, called 
Col. Wood, in this country in 1654, J ust one hundred years 
before McBride carved his record on the tree at the mouth 
of the Kentucky River. With such records as these we 
can hardly concede the honor of discovering Kentucky 
to him, of whom we know nothing except his name upon 
a tree at the mouth of the Kentucky, with the date 1754. 



His Life and Writings. n o 

QJopographtral ano Mixeb fljtatorg. 

We next have thirty-eight pages of mixed topographical, 
natural, and civil history, somewhat after the manner in 
which a real-estate agent of modern times would pre- 
sent the merits of a country in which he had lands for 
sale. It consists of descriptive essays under the following 
ten heads: 1st. Situation and Boundaries; 2d. Rivers; 
3d. Nature of the soil; 4th. Air and Climate; 5th. Soil 
and Produce; 6th. Quadrupeds; 7th. Inhabitants; 8th. Cu- 
riosities; 9th. Rights of Land; 10th. Trade of Kentucky. 
These headings indicate that but little civil or political 
history is given, while all that can be said of the coun- 
try as an inducement to strangers to come and buy and 
settle has ample attention. It is described as a land as 
good as that which the inspired writer of old called "a 
land of brooks of water, of fountains and depths that 
spring out of the valleys and hills; a land of wheat and 
barley and vines." No one can read this part of the his- 
tory of Filson without concluding that it was intended 
to advertise the rich lands of Kentucky, and enable spec- 
ulators to sell as many acres as possible to those whom 
the book might induce to come to the country. Under 
the last of these headings, "Trade of Kentucky," appears 
an allusion to the steamboat invented by James Rum- 

5 



34 yohn Filson; 

say, of Virginia. It was to carry a burden of ten tons, 
and move from twenty-five to forty miles per day, up 
stream, against a current of ten miles an hour. This was 
in 1784, and is remarkable for an early mention of the 
practicability of propelling vessels on water by steam. It 
was three years before Fitch launched his steamer upon 
the Delaware, and twenty-three years before the Clermont 
of Fulton moved upon the waters of the Hudson. 



Hani of Inmratir $mt?& 

The fault of this part of Filson's history is that too 
much is said about the country and too little about the 
people. If the author had drawn a picture of domestic 
life, in the times about which he was writing, how much 
more interesting it would have been than his descriptions 
of a country soon to change as the forest faded away 
before the ax of civilization, and farms and villages 
usurped the abode of the deer and the buffalo! He 
should have conducted his readers into the picketed fort 
and shown them the pioneer mothers, in time of peace, 
spinning the yarn and weaving the cloth that was to 
clothe the family, and, in time of war, molding the bul- 
lets that their husbands were to fire at the besieging 
savage. He should have made them guests at a mar- 



His Life and Writings. n r 

riage feast, where the joyous hearts of a whole station 
gathered around the puncheon table loaded with those 
luxuries of the season, venison, corn-bread and hominy, 
served in wooden vessels; and the next day conducted 
them to the house-raising, where all the neighbors joined 
in building a cabin for the newly married couple to 
begin wedded life; and yet again to the "house-warm- 
ing," in which the neighbors all danced the new cabin 
into use. He should have shown us a funeral, where 
the lamented hunter was laid in his rough board coffin 
and sunk into his unmarked grave, or hidden beneath 
piles of stone and wood amid the sorrows and tears of 
all. The children in their log school-house; the congre- 
gation in the solemn woods listening to the itinerant 
preacher, with rifles in hand and no walls around except 
the trunks of the native trees and no roof above except 
their arching branches; the Sunday gathering of the 
neighbors outside of the fort-gate to chat over the affairs 
of the settlement; the evening dance to the stirring 
sound of the violin in the hands of some old family 
negro at the cabin of a pioneer mother ever ready to 
sacrifice her own comfort to the pleasure of the young — 
these and other scenes in domestic life would have im- 
parted an interest and value to the narrative that nothing 
else could replace. 



n 6 John Filson. 



(Eh* Apprnfctx to % ISjiaiflnj. 

After finishing his sketch of the discovery, purchase, 
and settlement of Kentucky, Filson added an appendix 
which was greater than the previous work. The appen- 
dix was as much out of proportion to the preceding 
matter as the title-page was to the succeeding. While 
only forty-eight pages were required for the main work, 
the appendix consumed seventy. 



®h* Soon? Narrattbr. 

The first article in the appendix appears under the 
head of "The adventures of Colonel Daniel Boon, 
formerly a hunter, containing a narrative of the wars of 
Kentucke." This article covers thirty-three and one-half 
pages, and is the most interesting, as well as the most 
valuable, part of the work. It is the gem of the col- 
lection. It is the little fountain from which have flowed 
so many enchanting streams of Indian conflict and pio- 
neer adventure in the "dark and bloody ground." It 
begins with Boone's first coming to Kentucky, in 1769, 
and gives the scenes in which he was engaged until 
1784, when the work was published. The events in the 



His Life and Writings. 07 

career of Boone thus narrated were the initial steps of 
Kentucky's settlement, and make up the charming first 
chapter of our Western annals. The little work is not 
without its faults, such as representing herds of buffalo 
ignorant of the violence of man, when the Indians had 
been killing them for ages unknown; trees gay with 
blossoms on the 22d of December, when the forests of 
Kentucky seldom show a leaf; views of the Ohio River 
and the mountains at the same time from an eminence 
in Kentucky, when there is no known point from which 
such a sight could be had without the use of a tele- 
scope, which Boone does not say he had; and making 
the plain old pioneer compare the ragged tops of the 
Cumberland Mountains to the ruins of Palmyra and Per- 
sepolis, when it may be doubted if he could distinguish 
these ancient cities from Gog and Magog, or that he had 
any just conception of the classical allusion. Never- 
theless, with all its faults and all its omissions of scenes 
in which Boone was not engaged, it is the charming first 
story of border wars in Kentucky, and will grow more 
enchanting as the scenes it presents recede further and 
further into the past. The author gives the old pioneer 
the full credit of the narrative by stating, in the pref- 
ace, that it was written from his own mouth, and by pub- 
lishing it with his full name subscribed thereto. It was 



^8 yohn FUson: 

from this sketch by Filson that the fame of Boone took 
its rise — that he became an historic character, occupying 
conspicuous pages in books, not only in his own but in 
foreign languages, and even secured a place in the death- 
less verse of the immortal Byron. 



Wt\t Aborigines of HCrnturku. 

The next article in the appendix is a short one of 
four and a half pages, giving the proceedings of a coun- 
cil held by Thomas J. Dal ton with the Piankashaw In- 
dians at Vincennes, in 1784. This is followed by an 
essay on the Indians, covering twenty pages, giving the 
different tribes east of the Mississippi and nearest to 
Kentucky, their numbers and origin, their persons and 
habits, their genius and religion. He enumerates thirty- 
four different tribes, and estimates their total number at 
20,000, with from 4,000 to 5,000 warriors. In this article on 
the Indians Filson takes occasion to give his views about 
Prince Madoc planting a Welsh colony in America in the 
twelfth century. He does not say, in so many words, 
that he believed the story, but the inference is not vio- 
lent that he did believe it. After premising that frequent 
accounts had come to the Western settlements of a tribe 



His Life and Writings. 39 

of Indians dwelling far up the Missouri River, who spoke 
the Welsh language and retained some ceremonies of the 
Christian worship, he thus brings forward a prominent 
Kentuckian in support of the theory: 

"Captain Abraham Chaplain, of Kentucke, a gentleman whose veracity 
may be entirely depended upon, assured the author that in the late war, being 
with his company in garrison at Kaskasky, some Indians came there, and speak- 
ing in the Welsh dialect, were perfectly understood and conversed with by two 
Welshmen in his company, and that they informed them of the situation of their 
nation as mentioned above." 

If Filson had added to this testimony of Captain 
Chaplain the letter of Rev. Morgan Jones, in 1685, and 
the narrative of Isaac Stewart, in 1782, he would have 
presented in a group three of the best arguments that 
have ever been made in favor of the old Welsh Chroni- 
cle found in the history of Caradoc. The discoveries 
of the last hundred years have left no place on our con- 
tinent for the abode of the descendants of Prince Madoc; 
but it is strange that when an Indian chief of the tribe 
of Modoc was captured in the Black Hills a few years 
ago, the antiquarians did not again revive the discussion of 
the Welsh colony of the twelfth century in America. 



4.0 yohn Filson: 

Errata of 17B3 anil ©able of iiatanrra. 

Filson completed his work with an extract from the 
treaty of 1783, followed by a table of distances, in which 
he gives the route by land from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh 
and around through Virginia and Cumberland Gap to 
the Falls of the Ohio. Recent measurements have shown 
unimportant errors of computation in the 320 miles he 
gives from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, and the 826 through 
Virginia and the Gap to the Falls. 



Sarity of tbr Sjiainry and fftap 

Thus, at the risk of being tedious, I have given an 
outline of the contents of Filson's book, now become 
so rare as to be absolutely beyond the reach of the 
general reader. It is the rarest of the rare Kentucky 
books, and not one in a thousand of the present gen- 
eration has ever seen it. The few copies that exist are 
either locked up in public libraries or in the collections 
of private citizens, who exclude them from the shelves 
of booksellers until death separates an owner from his 
treasure, and thus enables a new bibliophile to obtain it 
at an exorbitant price. Recently a copy in the Brinley 



His Life and Writings. a\ 

collection was sold at auction in New York for $120, 
about three hundred times the original pittance realized 
by the author for it when first published. An account 
made out by Filson against Jones, in the spring of 
1785, shows that the book was charged at two shillings 
and sixpence and the map at five shillings, or about 
forty-one cents for the book and eighty-three cents for 
the map. It is probable that the exceedingly great 
scarcity of the map would make one of them bring a 
proportionately high price if thrown upon the market 
in our times. This great rarity of both the book and 
map has induced Robert Clarke & Co., of Cincinnati, to 
re-issue them, and they will probably soon appear in 
the excellent Ohio Valley Historical Series of these 
publishers. 

2fe»rhtta of WHboub ipatnnj. 

In 1785, the year after the first appearance of the 
work, it was translated into French and published at 
Paris by M. Parraud. From the French edition was 
omitted Filson's table of distances, but to it added the 
acts of Congress as to the admission of new States and 
the disposition of the lands ceded by the States; ex- 
tracts from classical authors, indicating a knowledge of 

6 



a 2 fohn Filson: 

America among the ancients; a collection of passages 
showing the government, the councils, and the eloquence 
of the Indians; and an extract from Isaac Stewart's 
account of his captivity among the savages. Imlay, in 
the second edition of his "Topographical Description 
of North America," published at London in 1793, em- 
bodied the entire work of Filson, and repeated it in 
his third edition of 1797. In the year 1793 Samuel 
Campbell, of New York, issued an edition of the works 
of Imlay and Filson in two volumes, the second of which 
contained the work of Filson. In each of these publi- 
cations Filson was given full credit for his entire work, 
but not so with some other reprints. In the American 
Museum, a monthly periodical printed at Philadelphia 
from 1787 to 1793, was set the mean example of sep- 
arating one part of Filson's work from the rest, and 
reprinting it without credit to the author. In the Oc- 
tober number of that journal for 1787 appeared the 
adventures of Daniel Boone, as written and published 
by Filson, with the statement that Boone was the author. 
No one from reading the article in this magazine would 
have known that such a man as Filson had ever existed. 
The unkind thing thus begun by this magazine found 
plenty of congenial imitators afterwards; and, even in 
Kentucky, Samuel L. Metcalf published a collection of 



His Life and Writings. 43 

narratives at Lexington, in 1821, in which that of Boone 
appears first in the book, without one word to indicate 
that it had been written by Filson. Thus, partly by the 
inadvertence of the author in publishing this narrative 
with the name of Daniel Boone subscribed in full thereto, 
and partly by the meanness of reprinters, the most im- 
portant part of his work has been separated from him 
and the authorship thereof given to Boone, who never 
himself claimed any such honor. There is not a page in 
it that would not have cost Boone more hard work than 
an Indian campaign. Boone could hunt, shoot, roam the 
woods, and fight the Indians as well as anybody, but 
when it came to writing it was hard labor for him to 
put the simplest ideas in the crudest form on paper. 

Ws\t loom? Narratibr Attributed to marshall. 

Outside of books and magazines, tradition attempted 
to bring down to us the shabby report that the narra- 
tive of Boone had been written by Humphrey Marshall, 
the historian. This report probably grew out of the fact 
that Filson may have submitted his manuscript to Mar- 
shall for correction. There is some indication in the 
narrative of the pen of Marshall having made revisory 
touches here and there. I have manuscripts of Filson 



a a yohn Filson: 

which show that his spelling was not always good, his 
grammar sometimes incorrect, his use of capitals often 
bad, and his words now and then illy chosen. It was 
lucky for him if his manuscript could pass under the 
correcting hand of such a scholar as Marshall, and I 
doubt not this was done. I have as little doubt, however, 
that Filson was the author of the Boone narrative, and 
that he wrote it, as he says in his preface, from the 
mouth of Boone himself. Marshall lived in Kentucky 
for half a century after the death of Filson, and pub- 
lished and republished his history without laying claim 
to the Boone narrative. He would not have failed to 
appropriate so precious a jewel if it had belonged to 
him. Not only did he lay no claim to it, but, in the 
preface to the second edition of his history, he expressly 
alludes to the Boone narrative as having been written 
by Filson. 



2jiH Srturtt tn iKntturku after Publishing his l|istnrg- 

While Filson was writing his book and the work was 
passing through the press, he considered himself a citi- 
zen of his native Pennsylvania. In his preface to his 
book he stated that he was not an inhabitant of Ken- 



His Life and Writings. ac 

tucky. When his book was published, however, he pre- 
pared for another trip to Kentucky, and this time with 
the seeming intention of a permanent home. He was 
then the owner of lands in the new country, had writ- 
ten its history, had many acquaintances there, and it was 
natural that he should wish to become a citizen thereof. 

Glh* Wagntt Journpg to Pittsburgh. 

In the spring of 1785 he secured a Jersey wagon 
with a canvas top for the purpose of transporting him- 
self and such articles as he wanted to carry with him 
to Kentucky. It seems that he had but one horse to 
draw his wagon built for two, and consequently he made 
arrangements with John Rice Jones, a young lawyer who 
wished to go to Kentucky, to use a horse belonging to 
Jones in his team, and furnish seats in the wagon for 
the wife and child of Jones. With the Joneses as passen- 
gers and their luggage, added to some books and maps and 
other articles of his own for freight, the vehicle set out from 
Wilmington April 25, 1785, and arrived at Philadelphia the 
same day. On the following day it started on the long, 
weary, mountainous road to Pittsburgh, distant 320 miles, 
through Lancaster, Middletown, Harris' Ferry, Carlisle, 
Shippinsburg, Chamberstown, Fort Loudon, Fort Little- 



4 6 John Filson: 

ton, Juniata Creek, Bedford, Stony Creek, and Fort Lig- 
onier. He reached Pittsburgh on the 26th of May, and 
the twenty-six days consumed in making the trip give 
some idea of the difficulties of travel in those times. 
The average distance made per day was about twelve 
miles, and they were thankful to accomplish that much 
in the midst of the obstacles that beset them. No 
wonder Jones was out of sorts when he reached Pittsburgh. 
Filson had to doctor him, which he did by administer- 
ing two doses of Peruvian bark and two "vomits," for 
which he charged him nine shillings. Jones, however, 
seems to have grown well enough under the treatment 
of Filson to have disposed of two of Filson's books and 
maps at Pittsburgh for fifteen shillings. Nothing is said 
about Mrs. Jones and the baby, but, as they are charged 
nothing for Filson's barks and emetics, it is to be sup- 
posed that they stood the wagon's joltings better than 
Jones himself. 

QJIje 3Uatbnat ©rip to SumiatriUp. 

On Sunday, May 27, 1785, the wagon was abandoned 
at Pittsburgh for the more easy-going flatboat, better 
known as the Kentucky boat. The party took passage 
in one of these arks loaded with horses, cattle, grocer- 



His Life and Writings. 47 

ies, dry goods, hardware, farming implements, and human 
beings bound for the Falls of the Ohio. Along the 
channel of "the beautiful river," severing the dark for- 
ests on either side like the zig-zag lightning's path 
through the black clouds, they floated on the gentle 
current. The huge old sycamores and cottonwoods that 
had sentineled the wild banks for untold years stood at 
the water's edge and leaned over the stream and beheld 
their widespreading arms and giant forms mirrored in 
the crystal waters. Everything along the shores indicated 
the uninterrupted abode of the wild animals of the for- 
est, except here and there, upon some rich bottom raised 
above the vernal floods, peeped from the rank foliage 
solitary mounds that had been reared so long ago by 
human beings that their builders had passed away with- 
out a tradition, a history, or a name. The haughty buffalo 
and the timid deer, disdaining the smaller streams that 
paid tribute to the Ohio, came to the margin of the 
main river to slake their thirst, and there was nothing 
in all the vast solitude to remind one of civilized life ex- 
cept the rude vessel that floated along the current. On 
the thirteenth day after leaving Pittsburgh the boat was 
moored in the mouth of Beargrass Creek, June 10, 1785. 
The long journey was now ended, and the day of reck- 
oning arrived. Filson having acted as paymaster on the 



a 8 "John Filson: 

way, when they arrived at Louisville made out an account 

against Jones for his share of the expenses of the trip. 
The following is a copy of the original, in the handwrit- 
ing of Filson, now in my possession: 

JOHN RICE JONES Dr. TO JOHN FILSON. 

£ S. D. 
April 30, 1785. To cash paid for his freight and passage from Phila- 
delphia to Wilmington, 15 

To keeping his horse before our procedure on our journey 15 days, . . 15 
May 26. His passage in the wagon to Pittsburgh; his wife and child's 

passage to Pittsburgh, 3 76 

Carriage of 217 lbs at 45s pr C, 4 7 7 

Two books and two maps of mine in Pittsburgh, 15 

Cash in pay for bread and butter in do., 6 

Two vomits, 40 

Pulverized Peruvian barks at twice, 50 

Cash for his horse feed after arrival in Pittsburgh 12 

Removing his property from the town in Pittsburgh on board the 

boat, 05 

Pennsylvania currency 11 11 3 

Equal to do. in Virginia currency 9 50 

June 10. To one of my maps at Louisville, 5 ... 

£9 10 

1 12 5 

Balance due in Virginia currency, £7 17 7 

CONTRA CR. 

Reed from John Rice Jones the services of his horse in my team to 
Pittsburgh in consequence of an agreement in Wilmington with 
him on act. of his passage in the wagon. 



His Life and Writings. a q 

April 29, 1785. Reed from him in Wilmington one thermometer and £. S. D. 

case, 19 

One Book of Carver's Travels, 90 

One Book of Gibson's surveying, 12 

Pennsylvania currency, 2 06 

Equal do. in Virginia currency, £\ 12 5 



About 3Ul0mt. 

This account Jones, possibly somewhat exhausted by 
the two "vomits" Filson had given him at Pittsburgh, 
and not quite restored by the Peruvian barks, did not 
promptly pay when they reached the Falls. Filson applied 
to Esquire Richard Terrell for advice as to the mode of 
making the tardy hurry up payment in this country. Ter- 
rell satisfied his inquiries, and having sworn Filson to the 
correctness of the account and the balance of £7 17s 7d, 
proceeded to enforce its payment by the pressing aid of 
the law. In due season judgment was rendered for the 
debt and execution issued against the goods and chat- 
tels of Jones for the amount, but no property could be 
found to satisfy it, and Filson watched his opportunity for 
better results. Finally he discovered what he thought was 
an extra cow on the premises of Jones, and got an 



ro John Filson: 

attachment from Esquire Alexander Breckinridge to secure 
it. Deputy Sheriff Reuben Eastin was hunted up and 
sent immediately with the attachment after the cow. But 
it turned out that the animal was "a gentleman cow," 
as Mrs. Jones expressed it, at her house on a visit, and 
so disregardful of fences and gates that she would be 
glad to get rid of him. The laugh as well as the costs 
were now upon Filson, and he quitted the case in dis- 
gust. Jones, who afterwards became a prominent member 
of the early bar of Louisville, used to tell this as well as 
the following anecdote about Filson: On one occasion, 
while their wagon was crossing the mountains, Filson, 
being in front and leading the horses, stooped down to 
examine a curious rock that had attracted his attention. 
While thus intent upon his lithological investigation, one 
of the horses passed on each side of him, and the wagon 
went over him until the rear axletree was above his head. 
Filson, then awaking to his situation, threw up his head 
which, coming in contact with the axletree, pretty nearly 
made an end of him. He was almost scalped, and made 
the balance of the way to Pittsburgh with a bandaged 
head. Filson took the accident good naturedly, however, 
and joked about manufacturing axletrees on a large scale 
and selling them to the Indians for an improved kind of 
scalping knives. 



His Life and Writings. § i 

%t g>?lla hia Anrratral Sjmtt? ano §wka £fato A&tonturra 
in the 3IUtnma (Country. 

After Filson's return to Kentucky in 1785, his roving 
habits and restless spirit caught the excitement then 
prevalent about the Illinois country, and he made several 
trips into this new region with the intention, perhaps, of 
publishing an account of it, as he had of Kentucky. In 
July, 1785, he left Louisville in a canoe and paddled his 
way down the Ohio and up the Wabash to Post St. 
Vincent. In August he returned through the woods to 
the Falls. Again in Louisville, he consummated his 
purpose to become a citizen of Kentucky. On the 14th 
of October he executed and delivered to Daniel Henry, 
a merchant of Louisville, a bond for a deed to his 
patrimonial estate of 240 acres on the west branch of 
the Brandywine, in the township of East Fallowfield, in 
Chester County, Pennsylvania. The penalty of this bond 
was .£2,000, and in it Filson describes himself as a citi- 
zen of Kentucky. A singular feature of this bond is 
that it was witnessed by David Morgan, Benjamin Ear- 
ickson, Daniel Buckley, Martin Carney, John Williams, 
and James Morrison, besides being acknowledged in open 
court and attested by William Johnston the clerk. The 



c 2 John Filson : 

tie that bound Filson to his native Brandywine was 
now loosed, and, although he was the owner of 1,500 
acres of land which he had purchased of Squire Boone 
in Jefferson County, and described himself as a resident of 
that county, he does not appear to have been long 
enough in any one place, during his short career in Ken- 
tucky, to entitle it to the name of home. He was a 
restless, roving, visionary adventurer, making his sudden 
appearance at distant and unexpected places in exceed- 
ingly short intervals of time. Toward the close of the 
year 1785 he again went in a canoe over the long 
water-way down the Ohio and up the Wabash, from 
Louisville to Post St. Vincent, computed at 450 miles. 
This time he took the courses of the rivers with his 
compass, and estimated the distances by the time con- 
sumed in going over them in his canoe. He reached 
Vincennes about Christmas, and on the last day but 
one of the year executed an obligation to John Brown, 
then a rising young lawyer in Kentucky, who afterwards 
became not only the first member of Congress from Ken- 
tucky but the first from the great Valley of the Missis- 
sippi. This obligation, quaint in itself, is suggestive of 
a necessary custom of the times in which it was given. 
There was then but little trade between Kentucky and the 
Spanish possessions on the Mississippi, and the gross pro- 



His Life and Writings. 53 

ducts of the country, such as corn and tobacco, could not 
be easily transported to Philadelphia, the principal source 
from which goods were obtained. The fur of the beaver, 
however, was light for its value, and could be profitably 
sent to Philadelphia in exchange for goods. Hence 
beaver fur became a medium of exchange, and supplied 
the place of money. Obligations were made payable in 
money or in beaver fur at a fixed price per pound. The 
obligation given by Filson to Brown was in accordance 
with this custom. Filson owed Brown $61, maybe for 
borrowed money but possibly for professional services, for 
Brown was a lawyer and Filson one of those unfortu- 
nates who was forever needing legal help. The original 
obligation is now in my possession, and the following is 
a copy: 

"I acknowledge myself indebted to John Brown the amount of sixty one 
dollars or sixty-one pounds of beaver, which I promise to pay to him upon demand 
next spring either at Post St. Vincent or Falls of Ohio. Witness my hand this 
30th day of Deer., Anno Domini 1785. 

Testes, John Adams. John Filson." 

3TU0ott iitfltakra Mmkvzta far IteatorB. 

While this obligation on the part of Filson to pay 
a debt in money or beaver fur indicates nothing more 
than a custom of the times, an anecdote which has been 



ca John Filson: 

handed down concerning him makes it probable that 
he was engaged in the fur trade. Before he became an 
expert in judging of furs, a trapper proposed to sell him 
some muskrat skins. Filson told him he was dealing in 
beaver furs only, and that the skins offered would not suit 
him. The cunning old trapper, quickly measuring Fil- 
son's capacity as a fur trader, went away, removed the 
tails from his muskrat skins, and returned with them. 
He now offered them to Filson as young beavers, the 
most valuable of all. Filson bought the supposed young 
beavers and paid well for them, but when he came to sell 
them again found himself badly sold. He never bought 
any more muskrat skins for young beavers. John San- 
ders, a famous old hunter, used to tell this story about 
Filson, and was suspected of having planned the joke 
and profited by the fraud. 

A Steafc Hooq Eaia at 3Filaon*a Snnr. 

The first half of the year 1786 was spent by Filson 
in the Illinois country, with his residence at Post St. 
Vincent, then the headquarters of that region. In his 
will he states that he owned property here, and some of 
his known transactions indicate that he was here engaged 
in trade, with business connections extending to the Falls 



His Life and Writings. r c 

of the Ohio. It is probable, however, that much of his 
time was spent here in collecting information for his 
contemplated publication about this country. His vision- 
ary character suited him better for making books than 
success in business pursuits. An anecdote, told to me by 
William Marshall concerning him at Vincennes, illus- 
trates the recklessness of life and the serious subjects 
about which jokes were perpetrated in those times. A 
French trader had been killed in a drunken frolic with 
the Indians on New Year's night, and while the orgies 
continued some grim wags of the town stole away the 
corpse in the night and laid it before Filson's door. It 
was the purpose of these cadaverous jokers to see how 
much Filson would be frightened the next morning when 
he found the lifeless visitor at his door. As a matter of 
course, Filson could not see where the joke came in, but 
supposed the corpse had been laid at his door to divert 
suspicion from the murderer and direct it to him. Fil- 
son vehemently denounced the hardened criminal who 
could thus heartlessly direct suspicion against an inno- 
cent character, but never once suspected the ghastly 
humor that lay at the bottom of the transaction. 



r6 yohn Filson: 

Jfftlann'fl Inpublialjrii Unlinks. 

What Filson wrote about the Illinois country, though 
designed by him for publication, was never published, so 
far as I have been able to ascertain. After his death and 
the death of General George Rogers Clark, four of his 
manuscripts were found among the papers of Clark, with 
whom he had probably left them in his lifetime. These 
manuscripts are now in the possession of Dr. Lyman 
C. Draper, of Madison, Wisconsin, and may be briefly 
described as follows : 

1. A diary of his journey from Pennsylvania down 
the Ohio and up the Wabash rivers to Post St. Vincent 
in the spring and summer of 1785. Small quarto, 32 
pages. 

2. An account of his trip from Vincennes to Louis- 
ville by land in August, 1785. i2mo, 14 pages. 

3. "A journal of two voyages from the Falls of Ohio 
to Post St. Vincent, on Wabash River, containing a variety 
of remarks and intelligence from that remote quarter, 
by the author of a late publication, with a few remarks 
upon the situation of Pittsburgh and the voyage down 
the rapids." Foolscap, 12 pages. 

4. An account of his attempted trip by water from 
Vincennes to Louisville in August, 1786, the attack upon 



His Life and Writings. en 

him by the Indians on the Wabash, and his subsequent 
trip to the Falls of the Ohio by land. Small folio, 22 
pages. 

The last named manuscript affords more of the indi- 
viduality of Filson than any of the others, and an extract 
from it will be acceptable to those who have not access 
to the original. These manuscripts contain information 
about the Illinois country that has never been published, 
and Dr. Draper expects to use it in the life of General 
Clark he intends to publish. He has no objections, how- 
ever, to my use of the information relating particularly to 
Filson, but, on the contrary, has generously furnished me 
with it. On the 1st of June, 1786, Filson set out from 
Vincennes to go down the Wabash and up the Ohio to 
Louisville. He secured a pirogue and placed in it his 
trunks and such other articles as he wished to transport 
to the Falls of the Ohio. Having employed three men 
to assist on the trip, he started out, with two of them so 
drunk that himself and the other could only be depended 
upon for attention to the boat. When they reached the 
mouth of White River what were called Indian signs in 
those days began to appear. Six miles further on they 
saw a large wigwam on the western bank of the Wabash, 
and when they got opposite to it the Indians rushed out 
and began an attack upon their frail vessel. The rest of 



5 8 yohn Filson: 

the narrative is given in the language of Filson himself, 
copied by Dr. Draper from his manuscript, word for word 
and letter for letter, punctuation, spelling, grammar, and 
all just as Filson wrote it, as follows: 



iExtrart frnm Jffilann'B HJatutarrtpt. 

"I told my men there was Indians and immediately 
about fifteen guns were fired at us, accompanied with that 
infernal yell, which ever carries they idea of terror with 
the sound. Being too far distant from shore to receive 
much damage, though several bullets lodged in our boat, 
we steered across the river, but was immediately pursued 
by a pirogue, crowded with savages, firing upon us, and 
yelling to discourage flight; My place being in the steer- 
age, they directed their balls at me, numbers struck the 
boat, but although they came like hail, yet we gained the 
shore unhurt, my hat only received damages. It is impos- 
sible to paint the manner of our flight & the pursuit; no 
human warriors pursue more violently pursue the unhappy 
objects of their rage, than savages. Our arms consisted 
of only two fuzees and one sword; the savages being ad- 
vanced within fifty yards of shore, I directed my men to 
stand and fight them, they being advanced a few steps to 
flee, turned to me with a melancholy look, and saw cruel 



His Life and IVritings. rq 

death approaching; self-preservation determined their an- 
swers for escape. I then told them with speediest flight 
to save themselves, if possible. As I advance to land took 
up two small trunks, containing some valuable articles; 
these I cast under the nettles, a little distance from shore, 
and entered the woods in a different direction from my 
men. like the unhappy mariner ready to sink with his 
vessel in the foaming surge, used prayers and a vigorous 
flight for safety, the last hope of relief. These were not 
ineffectual; a wonderful deliverance indeed! Sure some 
guardian angel averted the impending danger. Who can 
reflect upon the circumstances without terror? the shore 
red with bloody savages, I may say just at my heels, who, 
that have not experienced such a situation can possibly 
conceive the distress? In flight I oft turned my eyes from 
behind some ancient friendly tree, to view some blood- 
thirsty savage, in full chase, with his terrible right hand, 
to lodge me in the land of silence. Sometimes I lay con- 
cealed in the thickest of cane and nettles, but immediately 
quitted the insecure covering, for to the sagacious savage 
my track must be obvious, as the herbage yielded to every 
step; and being wet did not recover their rectitude. Con- 
cluding that a crafty flight was the only possible means to 
ensure safety, I used many turnings and windings by cross- 
ing my track and walking back and on logs and spaces 



6o yohn Filson: 

clear of herbage. Wandering about two hours through 
the woods, I assayed to return to the spot where we were 
obliged to fly, and finding that the savages were gone over 
with their prize, I came near where I left my trunks, and 
seeing them safe, took them up, and departed, bending my 
course toward Post Vincent, which was thirty miles distant 
on a N. E. course, two of my men had directed their course 
up White river, and about half a mile from Wabash was 
cruelly massacred: my third man had concealed himself 
under a large fallen tree, a little distance from the river, 
that was closely fenced on either side by nettles: there 
trembling and pale he saw the savages returning with the 
clothing and scalps of his companions. 

"Whether these bloodhounds concluded me out of 
reach, or passed my footsteps unobserved, or attended more 
to the plunder, is a mystery: but as we had some spiritu- 
ous liquor on board, that probably might be the Lethe in 
my favor. With hasty steps I left the dangerous place, 
bearing the trunks, the reliques of my property, to the 
amount of 800 dollars in that country. In passing a few 
miles up White river, I saw many late indian camps which 
induced me to cross it the first opportunity: and having 
found some drift wood, by fastening a few logs with bark, 
I formed a raft, on which I comited my body to the full 
flowing stream: My trunks I had fastened on part of an 



His Life and Writings. 6j 

old plank separately. Having advanced a little distance 
from shore, my raft parted, and rendered my situation des- 
perate; when I escaped the savages I thought the bitter- 
ness of death was past, but now concluded my time must 
be near a period. A gleam of hope was yet left, in this 
dilemma I fastened upon one the logs, which being small, 
scarcely supported me from total immersion; with my left 
hand I held the little plank & with my right rowed across 
the river, about 400 yards wide. Thus I escaped again 
and continued my course through the shadow of death; 
for although I met no savages, there was the greatest prob- 
ability I should. The day began to decline, and heavy 
showers fell; the briers and thorns tore my cloaths, and 
my flesh experienced the most excrutiating pain, from their 
repeated assaults, and the invenomed nettles. Hunger now 
began to rage. I felt languid and my burthen increased 
with wet. Those lines in homer came lively 

"Oh f rends a thousand ways frail mortals to lead 
"To the cold tomb, and dreadful all to tread; 
"But dreadful most, when by a slow decay 
"Pale hunger wastes the manly strength away. 

"Late in the evening I advanced to the river Destice, 
on the east side of the Wabash, six leagues below the 
Post, and attempting to ford, it was near being drowned, 
but recovering the shore again I made a small raft and 



62 John Filson: 

went over, being soon overtaken by night, the moon 
shone clear, I continued to travel by its light, though a 
disagreeable walk: at length worn down with fatigues, 
I sat down, and attempted to strike fire, but my powder 
being damp, it was impracticable. Miriads of misketoes 
surrounded me, humming their unwelcome tune to my 
distressed body, and though in a very uncomfortable state, 
and under the power of these tormentors, sunk into sleep, 
and awoke not until day appeared again; when rousing 
up I continued my course, and arrived about noon at 
the Grand Parery containing about 10,000 acres; being 
then about six miles from town, it being visible. Along 
this extensive tract, which is exceedingly level and fertile, 
where scarcely a tree or shrub is seen, but variegated 
with pastures, meadows, fields of corn, and other fruits; 
and not the smallest enclosure with a fence or hedge 
throughout. The different plantations were conspicuous, 
with numbers of the inhabitants cultivating the corn- 
fields; had I beheld this in a day of prosperity, it must 
have afforded me pleasure; but all these laborious people 
were in dread of the savages, for if any imprudently fired 
a gun, with trembling hearts they all prepared for flight — ■ 
The french laboured without guards, being less the object 
of indian aversion than the americans; who at this time 
could not turn up the earth with a plow, unless guarded 



His Life and IVritings. 6? 

by armed men. To one of these military occupants I first 
advanced, who scarcely believed their eyes, so greatly was 
my condition altered: such is the difference between pros- 
perity and adversity. Here I met the warmest and most 
unfeigned sympathy, for in a land of suffering the unfor- 
tunate have that consolation. The humane people flocked 
around me to hear the melancholy tale, and gave me 
some wholesome provisions to refresh my emaciated spirits. 
Immediately quiting their tillage, conducted me to town 
in a carriage. 

"I took my lodging at the house of Colonel Small; and 
after having related the consequences of my adventure to 
the alarmed inhabitants, I advised to send a party to de- 
stroy the robbers, and retake the property; which then 
was easily practicable; many professed a willingness to 
proceed, but the Major part maturely considering that it 
would weaken their number in town, the indians by 
taking advantage of their absence, might make themselves 
masters of their fort, and destroy the women & children; 
it was therefore thought prudent to omit so interesting a 
design. Much distressed in body and mind, for some days, 
I was an object of pity; but recovering a little of the 
fatigue, was advised to use some sportive exercises to pre- 
vent a malady; the good effects of this I soon experienced; 
by which I am satisfied that a concise and diligent exer- 



64. yohn Filson: 

cise of body and mind, is essential to overcome the bad 
consequences that often result from a capital misfortune. 
Two principal causes moved me to expose myself at this 
time to danger on Wabash, one was the unhappy con- 
tentions existing between the french and american inhab- 
itants of the Post, on account of the unavoidable disputes 
daily multiplied between the latter and the savages; the 
former opposing every measure to which they were impelled 
by necessity to defend themselves from savage hostilities, 
so much influence has interesting commerce with man- 
kind, that in effect it causes social and civilized beings 
to laugh at the calamity of others, though unjustly and 
barbarous the cause, secondly a desire to see my friends, 
and native soil — Chester county in Pennsylvania. Being 
now unhappily convinced that a passage by water was 
impossible, I determined to go by land, It was then 
thought impossible to leave the Post either by land 
or water, without iminent danger; the savages being 
insiduously ambuscaded round the parery. My friends 
earnestly desired me to stay, representing the danger con- 
sequent upon such an undertaking. I thanked them for 
their advice, adding that from the late interposition of 
heaven in my favor it was plain that I was not reserved 
for a severer fate, but some valuable purpose. Being 
well refreshed in ten days, and finding a good hardy woods- 



His Life and Writings. 6 <- 

man intending the journey also, we agreed to leave the 
Post in the night of the twelfth of June. The moon 
shone with an agreeable lustre, and accompanied a small 
distance by some of our most valuable friends, we directed 
our course for the falls of ohio; and during the noctur- 
nal hours traveled about fifteen miles: Although every 
step was disagreeable through brushy woods, and swampy 
grounds, yet safety from savages, afforded us some pleas- 
ure: next day rafted over White river, A. M., continuing 
our course one and a half point south of east; concluding 
ourselves out of the reach of the savages lurking around 
the Post. The country lying between the Post and Louis- 
ville or Clarksville has a diversity of soil and timber and 
this being my second tour, suppose myself able to form 
a good judgment thereof; which for the information and 
satisfaction of my gentle readers for whose sake I write; 
have delineated my two journeys on my map of the coun- 
try, which from my own and some others observation I 
rest assured, is the best that can be given at this day. 
The explanation thereof, with the plan annexed, points 
out the particulars referring thereto. I concluded the 
journey in seven painful days, and arrived safe at the falls 
of ohio.* 

* Sailed in a barge to the Post from the falls of ohio in July, 1785, which time 
I truely took the meanders of ohio and wabash with my compass, and returned 
through the woods with the indians for my guides, and having the prospect of 
a publication, made the best observations possible." 

9 



66 yohn Filson: 

ije (gora from HCwttakg to fpttttBtjlbania bg Sano. 

The sad experience which Filson had thus had with 
the Indians, in his attempt to go from Vincennes to 
Louisville by water, seems to have given him a kind of 
hydrophobia and determined him, after he reached the 
Falls, to continue his journey to Pennsylvania by land. 
It was a serious undertaking to go on horseback from 
Louisville to Chester County, Pennsylvania. With boats 
constantly ascending the Ohio to Pittsburgh, more than 
two-thirds of the distance, it would appear like a Quixotic 
adventure to attempt the whole journey by land. Filson, 
however, remembering no doubt the Indians on the Wa- 
bash, did attempt and accomplish it. Baffled at first at 
Louisville by the running away of his horse, he secured 
another, threw his saddlebags across its back, and early 
in September he was jogging along the old wilderness 
road. The very names of the stations along this dismal 
route suggest the dreary wilderness in which most of 
them were situated. Here is the list of the stopping 
places and their distances apart, as Filson made it out 
himself: From the Falls of the Ohio to the Salt works, 
20 miles; thence to Bardstown 25, Harbison's 25, Har- 
land's 10, Harrod's Station 4, Logan's Station 7, Whitly's 
Station 5, Col. Edward's at Crab Orchard 5, English Sta- 



His Life and Writings. 67 

tion 3, Ford on Rock Castle River 25, Hazle Patch 10, 
Laurel River 15, Raccoon Spring 2, down Richland 
Creek 6, Richland Creek 8, Stinking Creek 7, Flat Lick 

2, Fork of Cumberland River 9, Cumberland Mountain 

3, Martin's Cabins 20, Valley Station 25, Walden's Ridge 

4, POwel's Mountain 3, Block House 33, Washington 
Court House 15, Head of Holstein 45, Boyd's 5, Stone 
Mill 8, Fort Chisel 11, Forks of the Road 12, New 
River 16, Alleghany Mountain 12, Patterson's on Roanoak 
8, Wood's on Catawba River 9, Bottetout Court House 21, 
James River 12, North Fork of James River 18, Stanton 
37, North Branch of Shenandoah 15, Shenandoah River 
29, Woodstock 15, Storer's Town 12, Newtown 10, Win- 
chester 8, Martinsburg 20, Wadkin's Ferry on Potomack 
13, Stone House Tavern 13, other side of the Mountain 
25, Mountain at Black Gap 7, Hunterstown 3, Abbottstown 
10, Yorktown 15, Wright's on Susquehannah 12, Lancaster 
10, and thence to the Brandy wine 50 miles, making in all 
from Louisville to his home about 800 miles. Such a 
distance on horseback over mountains, across rivers, and 
through forests is frightful to us of the age of railroads 
and steamboats, but it did not deter Filson. Neither was 
it considered much of an undertaking by our pioneer 
mothers, who either walked it or rode over it on horseback 
with dauntless hearts when they first came to Kentucky. 



68 John Filson; 

At ^ia (§lb l^ome in Olljealrr. 

When the weary journey was ended, and Filson had 
reached the banks of the Brandywine, September and Oc- 
tober had passed and the month of November had come. 
At his old home, in the midst of relatives and friends, 
with no Indians to disturb, and peace and plenty around, 
he recalled and reflected upon the dangers and hardships 
through which he had passed, and resolved again to be- 
come a citizen of his native country. The scenes he had 
witnessed brought to his mind the uncertainty of life, and 
on the 2 1 st of November he made his will, in the follow- 
ing words: 



I, John Filson, of East Fallowfield Township, in Chester County, State of 
Pennsylvania, being in perfect health and sound memory, and calling to mind 
the mutability of my body, knowing it is appointed for all men once to die do 
constitute make and ordain this my last will and testament in manner and form 
following, viz. I first & principally commend my soul to God who gave it hop- 
ing to receive the same again at the general resurrection, my body I also com- 
mend to the care of Providence and the discretion of my friends or fellow crea- 
tures to be buried in a Christian like manner; and as to such worldly substance 
wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me I give and bequeath the whole and 
every part thereof both real and personal to my dear brother Robert Filson 
and his heirs forever; viz 500 acres of land in Jefferson county in Virginia and 
1000 acres in the same county and State as will appear due from Squire Boone 
of said county upon two certain bonds to John Kephart which sd bonds were 
assigned to me; also all the property of the lands entered on Big Bone and Step- 
stone creeks as will appear by entries in Col Marshall's office in Fayette county 



His Life and Writings. 6g 

in Virginia aforesaid; also all the amount of bonds due to me in Kentucky and 
recovering by law as will appear by a list thereof in the hands of Capt James 
Patten my attorney at the Falls of Ohio; also all the amount of my property in 
Post St Vincent as will appear by a list of notes deeds etc in the hands of Col 
John Small my attorney in said town of St Vincent, hereby constituting and 
ordaining my brother Robert Filson aforesaid my true and lawful executor of 
all my estate both real and personal and by his discretion to be ordered as may 
be most just and equitable in every of my affairs wherewith he is or may be ac- 
quainted. In witness whereof I have to these presents set my hand and seal 
ordaining as afaresaid this to be my last will and testament and no other, hereby 
revoking and disannulling all other will or wills heretofore made by me this 21st 
day of November A D 1786. 

JOHN FILSON. 
(seal) 



Sjta 2U>iurtt to SCntturkg Again. 

After the life that Filson had lived in Kentucky, a 
quiet home among the farmers of the Brandywine was 
not endurable. The wild and stirring scenes of the bor- 
der, with all their hardships and dangers, were preferable. 
Early in the year 1787 the great distance between Penn- 
sylvania and Kentucky had again been crossed, and he 
was among the pioneers of the land whose history he 
had written and with whose destiny he had linked his 
own. But little is known of him for this year, however, 
except what has been gleaned from the records of courts. 
In the District Court, at Danville, he had a long suit 
against Robert Daniel, which was compromised by Dan- 



jo yohn Filson: 

iel's paying the debt and giving his obligation for the 
costs, which had become harder to pay than the original 
debt. Another suit had finally to be brought in Louis- 
ville for this bill of costs. At Stanford he had sued John 
K. Simpson, and gotten judgment for whatever sum he 
might prove at the next court to be due. This suit was 
also probably compromised, as no further proceedings 
have been found to have been taken in it. At Harrods- 
burg he sued John Morrison on a debt for one hundred 
and sixteen livres and eight sous, showing that it had 
been contracted among the French, at Post St. Vincent. 
Morrison could not be found for a long time, but finally 
he made his appearance in the neighborhood of Harrods- 
burg, and Filson accompanied the summons that went 
into the hands of Robert Patterson, the sheriff of Fay- 
ette County, with the following energetic note, copied ver- 
batim et literatim from the original: 

Mr. Patterson. You must execute this immediately the man is near har- 
rodsburg he is lately from Post St. Vincent a middle aged man. by strict 
enquiry you will hear of him. Delay no time Spare no search for him Yours 

JOHN FILSON. 

In this note we find the same want of punctuation 
and the same ill use of capital letters which characterize 
the writings of Filson. It is the only piece of his com- 
position, however, which indicates the nervousness, the 



His Life and Writings. n \ 

impatience, and the dictatorial spirit which this one bears 
upon its face, addressed, as it was, to an officer of the 
law in the official discharge of his duty. 

It would seem to us that a spirited man like Patterson, 
holding as important an office as that of sheriff of Fayette 
County in those days, would hardly have relished the re- 
ception of such a dictatorial note. It may be, however, 
that Filson was upon such terms of intimacy with Patter- 
son as to justify this kind of a letter. It was not long 
after this transaction when Filson and Patterson entered 
into a contract with Denman for the establishing of a 
town on the site of Cincinnati, and tradition has repre- 
sented them as having been great friends in their rela- 
tions. Indeed it has been handed down to us that when 
Filson became involved in somewhat of an affair of honor 
in consequence of a peculiar letter which he published in 
the Kentucky Gazette about establishing a seminary at 
Lexington, Patterson was his adviser. A reply to Filson's 
letter by an anonymous writer was so witty and sarcastic 
that the town of Lexington was laughing at Filson, and 
Patterson advised him to demand the author's name and 
put him out of his humorous vein. The anonymous writer 
would not, however, be put out of his humor by giving 
his name, and so left Filson to get satisfaction as best he 
could. Probably these intimate relations between Filson 



72 John Filson: 

and Patterson induced Filson to write him such a letter 
as he would not have presumed under other circumstances, 
for his general character was that of exceeding politeness 
and affability. 

IBrofom Bms Wilson. 

While Filson was suing others in 1787 he did not 
himself escape the pressure of the law. The obligation 
he had executed to John Brown, and of which a copy has 
heretofore been given, had not yet been liquidated. Brown 
could get neither the money nor the beaver-skins which 
the obligation bound Filson to pay. On his way to his old 
home in Pennsylvania the previous year Filson had writ- 
ten to Brown about this debt, and advised him to trade 
the note to George Caldwell or some one else, as he had 
more good will than money with which to pay it. The 
following is a facsimile of Filson's letter, the original 
of which is in my possession, showing not only his hand- 
writing, but such peculiarities of his style as beginning the 
words Friend and Harrod's Station with small letters, 
and delayed, creature — meaning his horse — and cash with 
capitals. 



/«&-»-?./£ 




/l^r^f^ -^#^ 






S'd^+s* y<rt^ frA^Cs Ge^n^ fa ^~ 




0%-v^eyi ^J/~^ry ^Je^t^f *^3 y 








His Life and Writings. yn 

Nolljttig but a Bickh to Makt a $i>bt 

On the back of this letter Filson indorsed, "I expect 
to return before Christmas, farewell my friend adeiu." But 
when he returned he still did not pay the note, and in 
September, 1787, Brown brought suit on it in Louisville. 
Strange to relate, when the execution issued on the judg- 
ment, nothing could be found belonging to Filson upon 
which to levy it. An attachment was issued to the county 
of Lincoln, and there levied on a sickle— not even a scythe 
or cradle for cutting grain, but an old-fashioned reaping- 
hook with teeth for biting off a handful at a time. As 
the ostensible owner of more than thirteen thousand acres 
of land in Kentucky, his finances must have been in a 
pitiable condition for him to have suffered suit on a note 
for sixty-one dollars, that had been due for more than a 
year, and then disclose no personal property out of which 
to make the debt, except an old rusty reaping-hook, that 
had possibly been sawing grain all over the country for 
years. 

IffH Arttrlp in Stebor of tl}? Stmittarg. 

In 1788 the six years in which Filson had been con- 
nected with affairs in Kentucky were brought to a sudden 
and tragical end. His last year in this region, however, 

10 



j a yohn Filson: 

associated his name with matters scarcely less important 
than the publication of his book. On the 19th of January 
he published an article in the Kentucky Gazette in favor 
of establishing a seminary in Lexington, in which a liberal 
education could be procured. The manners and morals 
of the pupils were to be cared for as well as their mental 
culture, and the French language was to be a part of 
the curriculum. This article, however, was peculiar both 
in matter and manner, and what it indicated about the 
superiority of Northern teachers over Southern, and said 
about country boys having their manners and appearance 
polished by town influences and Northern teachers, was 
not well received. The article drew a very sarcastic reply 
from some one over the anonymous signature of "Agricola." 
Filson felt the satire, and not conceiving any better way 
of meeting it, wrote a short reply demanding the name 
of the author. The only answer that he got was a sar- 
castic paraphrase of his own note, again signed "Agricola." 
Whether "pistols and coffee for two," or parched corn and 
jerk for all who might want to engage in a "free for all" 
followed, does not appear; but both of the writers having 
survived the correspondence, it is not likely that either of 
their communications was stained with blood. 



His Life and Writings. 75 



8je ta Jfarpman of % Surg in a 2|nrap §§>u\t. 

On the 7th of March, 1788, at the trial in Louisville, 
Filson sat on the jury in the case of Floyd's executor 
against Pomeroy. As evidence of the position he held 
in society he was made foreman of this jury, composed 
of such prominent citizens as Benjamin Johnston, Richard 
Woolfolk, John Thruston, and Daniel Broadhead. The 
suit had been brought for the killing of a valuable race 
mare, under the following circumstances: A blooded mare 
belonging to Colonel John Floyd's estate was exceedingly 
fond of leaping fences and making visits to neighboring 
fields to crop the young grain when it was tender and 
sweet. She made her appearance in the rye-field of George 
Pomeroy, and was browsing away as if the rye had been 
raised especially for her. Pomeroy set his old cur dog 
upon her to chase her out of the field, and he was doing 
pretty good service, barking at her heels and biting at 
her tail, when a bulldog, belonging to a neighbor, came 
along and joined in the chase. This bulldog was famous 
for seizing cattle and horses by the nose and causing 
them to turn somersaults. He had not had a case for 
some time and was, no doubt, out that morning in search 
of one. So when he saw the old cur biting at the tail of 



7 6 yohn Filson: 

the mare he went straight for the nose, caught a death 
grip in the nostrils, darted back and pulled down the 
head of the animal with such violence that her heels flew 
over her head. As the mare fell her back came in contact 
with a log of wood, which broke it and killed her. The 
proof before the jury was clear that Pomeroy had set his 
own dog upon the mare to chase her out of a field not 
surrounded by a lawful fence, and that she had been killed 
in the chase. Most of the jurors had made up their 
minds to make Pomeroy pay for the mare before they 
retired, but when they got into their room Filson con- 
tended that it was not Pomeroy's dog that did the mis- 
chief, but a villainous old bulldog that got into the chase 
without being asked. After this suggestion, shrewd as 
an advocate if not learned as a lawyer, it was not long 
before Filson, as foreman of the jury, brought in a verdict 
for the defendant. 

5jis iinrtrg on UeargraHB dmk. 

The last known act of Filson, in Louisville, was the 
writing of some verses, on the 30th of June, 1788. The 
manuscript was recently found by Americus Symmes, of 
the vicinity of Louisville, among the papers of his 
father, the famous author of the theory of the internal 






His Life and Writings. 77 

habitation of the earth. It is possible that Filson, just 
before his death at Losantiville, may have left this paper 
with Judge Symmes, from whom it passed into the col- 
lection of his nephew, where it was found. Whether 
the lines were written by or for some love-sick youth, 
who really attempted to end his sorrows by a plunge 
in Beargrass, or whether the scene was one simply of 
the imagination, can not now be determined. At the 
foot of Second Street, in Louisville, an old tree thrown 
across Beargrass in early times served as a bridge, and 
went by the name of "lover's leap." It is possible that 
some such scene as is described in these verses may 
have given this name to this bridge. There is nothing 
in the verses to impart poetic fame to Filson or any 
one else, but found, as they were, in the handwriting 
of Filson, they become a necessary part of his me- 
moirs. The following is a copy from the original in 
my possession: 

Written at Beargrass 30th June, 1788. 
Adieu ye limpid streams and cooling shades, 
Adieu ye groves, ye meadows, fields and meads, 
Adieu to all this scene and yon green bowers, 
Adieu to sweets and all this field of flowers; 
Adieu ye warbling train in every grove, 
Adieu, awhile, to all on earth but love. 
Adieu the sounding harp and cheerful lute 



yohn Filson: 



Adieu the viol bass or german flute. 

Adieu these rural scenes that once could please, 

Adieu to every joy and to my ease. 

Adieu most merry dances on the green, 

Adieu those blithesome hours I once have seen. 

Adieu to every joy which time invades, 

Adieu ye faithful swains and beauteous maids. 

Adieu Amanda who my soul ensnares, 

Adieu till fate this mortal wound repairs. 

Adieu my peace, the busy world farewell, 

Adieu to all but plains of Asphodel. 

Farewell yon mountains — brow and all the plain; 

One leap in yonder gulf shall end my pain. 

Then to Elysium fields I'll wing my way, 

Through dreary wastes to reach perpetual day, 

There with happy souls I'll careless rove 

And in their realms forget the pains of love. 



iijtH IFatal (Eontrart taith Sftmtatt and Patterson. 

It was not long after Filson wrote these verses when 
he left Louisville for Lexington, never more to return. 
His restless mind, ever grasping for things new, was soon 
to be gratified with the grandest of his schemes. In Au- 
gust, 1788, his opportunity came, and he entered into a con- 
tract with Matthias Denman and Robert Patterson, which, 
though grand, was destined to cost him his life. Den- 
man, a citizen of New Jersey, had by contract with Judge 
Symmes secured a right to about eight hundred acres of 



His Life and IVritings. jq 

land on the high bank of the Ohio River opposite to the 
mouth of the Licking, which he believed to be a good 
site for a town. He wanted partners to help him lay out 
the town and people it, and thus increase the value of his 
property. Patterson, a brave soldier and popular citizen 
of Kentucky, could bring settlers to the new town; and 
Filson, a surveyor and author of a popular history of the 
same State, could lay out the town and make known to 
the world its merits by publishing articles about it. These 
were the kind of partners that Denman wanted, and when 
they got together and talked the matter over they soon 
came to an understanding. Denman sold to Patterson 
and Filson each an undivided third of his land, and, re- 
taining the remaining third himself, the three became ten- 
ants in common of the original site of the present city of 
Cincinnati. The following is a copy of their contract from 
an old manuscript in my possession: 



(Untenant faith, rrfmnrp in EnaantiniUp. 

A covenant and agreement made and concluded this 25th day of August 
1788, between Matthias Denman of Essex County New Jersey State of the one 
part and Robert Patterson and John Filson of Lexington in Fayette County, 
Kentucky of the other part witnesseth; that the said Matthias Denman having 
made entry of a tract of land on the north west side of Ohio river opposite the 
mouth of Licking river, in that district in which Judge Symmes has purchased 
from Congress and being seized thereof by right of entry to contain 640 acres 



John Filson: 



and the fractional parts that may pertain, do grant bargain and sell the ful 1 
two thirds thereof by an equal undivided right in partnership with the said 
Robert Patterson and John Filson their heirs and assigns; and upon producing 
indisputable testimony of his the said Denman's right and title to the said prem- 
ises they the said Patterson and Filson shall pay the sum of £"X> Virginia currency 
to the said Denman or his heirs or assigns as full remittance for moneys by him 
advanced in pay of said lands, every other institution, determination, and regu- 
lation respecting the laying off a town and establishing a ferry at and upon the 
premises to be the result of the united advice and consent of the parties in cove- 
nant aforesaid; and by these presents the parties bind themselves for the true 
performance of these covenants to each other in the penal sum of ^'1000 specie, 
hereunto affixing their hands and seals the day and year above written. 

MATTHIAS DENMAN 
Signed sealed and delivered in R. PATTERSON 

the presence of JOHN FILSON 

Henry Owen 

Abr McConneu. 



At the date of this contract the people of the United 
Colonies had not arrived at the blessing of a uniform or 
national currency. The coins of Spain, France, and Ger- 
many were in circulation, as well as those of England, and 
the confusion was great. The English pound and shilling 
had one value, in the dollars and cents of this country, in 
the New England States, another value in New York, an- 
other in Pennsylvania, another in Carolina, and another 
in New Jersey. Hence a contract like this between the 
citizens of different States had to specify the State whose 
standard was to give value to the money employed. The 



His Life and Writings. g i 

English pound in Virginia was then equal to $3-33/4 cents, 
and the shilling 16^ cents. Hence the price to be paid 
by Patterson and Filson for the two-thirds of the six hun- 
dred and forty acres and the fractions that pertained, all 
of which amounted to about eight hundred acres, was 
$66.66^3— cheap enough, it would seem, especially when 
contrasted with the millions that ground is now worth. 
It is possible that the character and efficiency of his part- 
ners for the work of establishing the contemplated town, 
and thus rendering the whole property more valuable, was 
estimated at considerable in addition to the low price put 
upon the land. 

fJrDfinwtns of ffioaanttfaiUp. 

On the 30th of August, 1788, they had agreed upon a 
plan of operations, and published in the Kentucky Gazette 
the following prospectus, evidently written by Filson: 

The subscribers being proprietors of a tract of land opposite the mouth 
of the Licking river, on the north west side of Ohio, have determined to lay 
off a town upon that excellent situation. The local and natural advantages 
speak its future prosperity, being equal if not superior to any on the bank of 
Ohio between the Miamis. The in-lots to be each half an acre, the out-lots 
four acres, thirty of each to be given to settlers upon paying one dollar and fifty 
cents for the survey and deed of each lot. The fifteenth day of September is 
appointed for a large company to meet in Lexington and mark a road from thence 
to the mouth of Licking, provided Judge Symmes arives, being daily expected. 

II 



82 yohn Filson: 

When the town is laid off lots will be given to such as may become residents 

before the first of April next. 

MATHIAS DENMAN 
ROBERT PATTERSON 
JOHN FILSON 



Sty* Name of JKilantt'a ©ohm. 

Having thus matured their plans and platted on 
paper their town of Losantiville and published their pro- 
gramme, the next thing to be done was to meet on 
the site and lay off the town on the ground itself. 
The wonder is that familiarity with the location on the 
bank of the Ohio, with the Little Miami above, the 
Great Miami below, and the Licking opposite, a name 
was not invented for the contemplated town meaning 
the city of four rivers, instead of opposite the mouth 
of one of them. I must not be understood, however, 
as objecting to the name of Losantiville for this reason, 
nor for the reasons assigned by others. To my ear 
Losantiville is quite as musical as Cincinnati, and not a 
syllable longer. The meaning of the name, too, is quite 
as appropriate as any that can be derived from the 
Roman farmer or the society formed by the leaders of 
our armies at the close of the Revolution. If an analy- 
sis of the word leads any one to the conclusion that it 



His Life and Writings. $* 

is pedagogical, then let him avoid separating it into 
parts and take it as a concatenation of euphonious syl- 
lables, making a musical whole. The last historian of 
Cincinnati, while sporting with a pedantry that could 
produce such a name, himself falls into a show of learn- 
ing by calling it "an eccentric polyglot neologism"; and 
the charming McMaster improves upon the grim humor 
of our own Collins, who hoped that the name "had no 
connection with his early death," by stating that a few 
weeks after coining the name "the Indians scalped him." 
Instead of thus ridiculing the school-master for inventing 
the name of Losantiville, his critics would have been no 
worse employed in deeming him a prophet who cast the 
eye of the seer far down the course of time, and seeing 
the grand Hall of sweet sounds in the Queen City of 
another century, gave to the incipient town a corre- 
sponding musical name. No one with "an ear for the 
concord of sweet sounds" will risk his reputation by 
saying that Cincinnati is more musical than Losantiville. 

(Elfatu}? of ®imp m Starting. 

According to the prospectus, a large party was to set 
out on the 15th of September, to go from Lexington to 
the mouth of the Licking and mark out a road on the 



84 yohn Filson: 

journey. But before the 15th of September arrived, word 
came from Limestone that Judge Symmes would meet 
the party at the mouth of the Licking on the 22d, and 
therefore the day of starting from Lexington was changed 
by the following notice, which appeared in the Kentucky 
Gazette on the 13th: 

N. B. The time appointed to go to the mouth of Licking is put off from 
the 15th as published last week to the 18th inst, when a large party will start 
from Lexington in order to meet Judge Symmes on Monday the 22d at that place 
agreeable to his own appointment and the business will then go on as proposed. 

R. PATTERSON 

3Ftlao«*a Snail to ffioHantuJUlp. 

This notice in the Gazette of the 13th, postponing the 
time of leaving Lexington for the mouth of the Licking, 
is signed by Patterson alone, and nothing is said in it 
specifically about marking out a road between these points. 
There was a reason for Denman and Filson not having 
signed this notice, as they had the contract and prospectus, 
and that reason is supplied by their absence from Lexing- 
ton on the 13th, when the notice appeared in the Gazette. 
Denman had gone back to Limestone to meet Judge 
Symmes, but where was Filson? Tradition says that he 
was in the woods with his compass determining the 
course the new road was to take, while Patterson was 



His Life and Writings. 85 

collecting the party to go over it. Filson determined the 
line of this road, and Isaac Taylor and his woodsmen 
marked it upon the trees. His anxiety to get to the site 
of his Losantiville and begin the work of laying out its 
streets and lots put him upon this road as early as possi- 
ble. The determining of this new road from Lexington 
to the mouth of the Licking was not as easy a matter 
when it was first done by Filson as it would now appear. 
The wilderness to be gone through had been traversed 
by no roads except that over which Colonel Byrd led his 
murderers against Ruddle's and Martin's stations in 1780, 
and that over which the avenging soldiers of General 
Clark had swept like an angry whirlwind soon afterward. 
Byrd had moved up the Licking and Clark down the Ken- 
tucky from Leestown to the mouth of Eagle Creek, and 
thence across the country to the mouth of the Licking. 
Filson, with a knowledge of the country that suggested a 
route better than either of these and the genius of an 
engineer to determine it, started from Lexington on a 
course almost north through Georgetown, then known as 
the Royal Spring, McLellan's Station, or Lebanon, and 
following the ridge that divided the waters flowing into 
the Licking from those that ran to the Kentucky and 
Ohio, reached the mouth of the Licking in almost a 
straight line. Modern engineering has not improved upon 



85 yohn Filson: 

the line of road thus marked out by Filson through the 
original forest, and for the simple reason that it was the 
best that could be selected. The Kentucky Central Rail- 
road in an evil hour ignored it for the winding way of 
the valley of the Licking, but the Cincinnati Southern 
adopted it as the best route between Lexington and the 
mouth of the Licking, and now sends its locomotives 
thundering along the path over which Filson led his 
Losantiville adventurers ninety-six years ago. 

ICaginn GDut JLoaantUriUp. 

It may never be known to what extent Filson suc- 
ceeded in the laying out of his Losantiville after he 
reached its site in September, 1788. In 181 1, Judge Bur- 
net, as attorney for the heirs of Israel Ludlow, brought 
suit in Cincinnati against John Kidd and Joel Williams 
for Lot No. 401. In the petition the cunning attorney 
adroitly avoided any mention of the name of Filson or 
the town of Losantiville, and made Cincinnati begin with 
its own name under the plan of Ludlow, who had been 
thrust into Filson's place after his death. But Filson 
and Losantiville were not such unsubstantial things as 
thus to be kept out of the Temple of Justice by the 
subtile plea of the lawyer in behalf of his clients. They 



His Life and Writings. 87 

were real things of the past, matters of history too indel- 
ibly impressed upon the memories of the living to be 
thus annihilated for the benefit of those whose interest it 
was to have them no more. In the answer of the defend- 
ants and in the depositions taken on both sides, the town 
of Losantiville loomed up like a thing of life in advance 
of Cincinnati and on its site, and guilty consciences 
might have seen wandering through its deserted streets 
the melancholy specter of Filson, murdered by his red 
enemies and despoiled by his white friends. The answer 
filed in this suit by E. Glover, as attorney for Kidd and 
Williams, and the proof taken by both plaintiffs and 
defendants, made and perpetuated an issue of fact as to 
what Filson did or did not in the laying out of Losantiville, 
each side of which may always have its advocates. The 
dead Filson had been despoiled of his estate in Cincin- 
nati, and it was the interest of the spoilers to blot out 
his name and his works from everything that could tell 
against them. Robert Patterson, one of the original pro- 
prietors of Losantiville and partners of Filson, deposed 
that the plan of a town to be called Losantiville was agreed 
upon, but before it was laid out on the ground Filson 
was killed by the Indians. On the contrary, Joel Williams, 
one of the first lot-owners in Cincinnati, stated in his 
answer that on or about the 22d of September, 1788, 



88 yohn Filson: 

John Filson landed upon the ground, and that on the 
following day he was surveying some of the lines and 
streets of Losantiville, whose location he fixed as they 
afterwards remained when the name was changed to Cin- 
cinnati. Patterson and Williams are here referred to 
only as representative men, for there were other witnesses 
who testified in unison with each of them. They were 
both intelligent and credible citizens testifying as to a 
fact about which we should think them both too familiar 
for doubt, and yet their statements are diametrically op- 
posed. If they could differ so widely as to what they 
learned in the very shadow of its occurrence, how are 
we, so far removed by time, to reconcile their statements 
or say which was right? 

Bjts liaappearanrp in ih? HJiami Waobs. 

Filson went on the ground opposite to the mouth 
of the Licking, with his compass and chain, for the pur- 
pose of laying off his Losantiville; and there is no con- 
clusive reason why he should not have run some of the 
lines and streets, as Williams says he did. He has come 
down to us in tradition as having laid out a town called 
Losantiville on the site of Cincinnati; and while there is 
no good reason for supposing that a complete survey of 



His Life and Writings. 8o 

the town was made by him in the short interval between 
his reaching the site and losing his life, a generous con- 
cession to a life sacrificed in the act would allow him 
to have done even more than Williams says he did. 
There was a difficulty in more than a rudimental survey 
at the time, which arose from a want of precise knowl- 
edge as to the external lines of section eighteen and 
fractional section seventeen, on which the town was to be 
laid out. It was known that the lands pre-empted by 
Denman lay opposite to the mouth of the Licking, and 
this was definite enough for Eastern Row, now Broad- 
way, to take its place immediately opposite to the mouth 
of the Licking, and eight parallel streets to follow in a 
westerly direction to Western Row, now Central Ave- 
nue — this being the direction from which the townships 
were to be ranged from the Great Miami. Possibly, 
while making these limited surveys in the midst of the 
doubts of external boundary, Judge Symmes arrived from 
Limestone, and with a view to determine, among other 
things, how far east of the Great Miami the western line 
of the Losantiville lands should begin, Filson joined the 
Symmes party in an exploring and surveying expedition 
to the Great Miami. In this excursion, after the country 
had been explored as high as the upper line of the fifth 
range of townships, Filson separated from his companions, 

12 



go yohn Filson: 

disappeared in the woods, and was never seen more. 
Hostile Indians were then lurking in the woods, and it 
was assumed that he had fallen beneath the stroke of 
the tomahawk or been pierced by the ball of a savage. 
His remains were never found, and none of his clothes 
or papers were ever recovered. No reports ever came 
from any of the Indian tribes that he had been either 
killed or captured by them. Numerous searches were 
made for his skeleton as the lapse of time deepened the 
melancholy tints of his fate, but none of his bones were 
ever found. The insidious panther, crouched amid the 
overhanging boughs, may have sprung upon him, or the 
surly bear have crushed him within its terrible embrace; 
the deadly crotalus may have sent fatal poison into his 
veins, or his own worn-out heart may have suddenly ceased 
to beat. Among the mighty sycamores and great maples 
of the valley of the Miami he took his departure from his 
companions, and these silent witnesses have told no story 
of the manner of his going. 

Hworiia of Jfftlaon'a Ifcattj. 

In the possession of Robert Clarke, of Cincinnati, is 
an old Dilworth's Arithmetic which once belonged to 
Filson and which served the purposes of many books 



His Life and Writings. g i 

in his hands. When he was in Louisville the scarcity 
of books of this kind made it necessary for him to make 
copies of parts of it for the use of others. Among the 
papers of the sheriff of Jefferson County for 1785 was 
found a manuscript in the handwriting of Filson, which 
I now have, giving the rules and examples of Dilworth 
for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing vulgar 
fractions, for calculating interest, etc. Filson gave this 
arithmetic to his brother Robert, whom he made the sole 
devisee and executor of his will, and who after his death 
wrote on its last page the following memorial : "This Book 
was given to me by my brother, john filson, who was 
killed by an indian on the north side of the ohio, 
October the First, 1788, about five miles from the 
Great Miami River and 20 or 25 from the Ohio." 
Robert Filson came to Kentucky early in the year 1789, 
and from those who were familiar with the circumstances 
learned the fact thus recorded. With a single exception 
it is the earliest known record of the sad event, and thus 
recorded by a loving hand with all the probabilities in its 
favor it should be accepted as the truth. Joseph Buell, 
a sergeant stationed at Fort Harmar, in 1788 in his jour- 
nal, published in Hildreth's Pioneer History, noted in 
October of that year that one of the surveyors of Judge 
Symmes had been killed by the Indians. The surveyor 



o 2 yohn Filson ; 

thus alluded to was without doubt John Filson, and this 
was the earliest known record of the event. In the suits 
of Cincinnati against Joel Williams in 1803, and Ludlow's 
heirs against Kidd and Williams in 181 1, it was stated in 
depositions under oath and in pleadings sworn to by the 
litigants, that Filson had been killed by the Indians in 
September or October, 1788, and such has been the un- 
broken chain of accepted evidence. 

ifeatlj at Ungrateful l^anite. 

And yet Filson, though full of premonitions, had not 
expected to die in that way. In his history of Kentucky 
he had traced the origin of the Indians from the wilds of 
Asia, across Bering Strait, to their home in the new 
world, and had enumerated and located their tribes, with 
many kind words and few harsh ones about their mode 
of life. In none of the wars of the English against the 
Indians has the name of John Filson been found among 
those who, in the name of civilization and Christianity, 
drove the red men from their ancestral hunting-grounds 
and appropriated their lands to their own use. He looked 
upon them as of the great family of humanity, and, though 
groping their way in the darkness of ignorance and bar- 
barism, yet human beings. When he was attacked by them 



His Life and Writings. go 

on the Wabash, and had to flee for his life, he deemed his 
escape an "interposition of heaven" that had preserved 
him for a valuable purpose. Alas! that miraculous pres- 
ervation was but to afford an opportunity for him to fall 
at their hands at another time and place, when no friendly 
help was near and no kind eye could see the final strug- 
gle. In his will he had commended his soul to Him who 
gave it, and his body to his "fellow creatures, to be buried 
in a Christian-like manner"; but he had no Christian pall 
nor funeral anthem. In the loneliness of the wild woods 
of the Miami the shadows of the great trees were his 
winding-sheet, and the melancholy winds which sighed 
through their pitying branches his requiem. No little 
mound attracts to his last resting-place, and no inscription 
tells of his deeds; but he will live, in his map of Ken- 
tucky and in his narrative of Boone, when others, laid be- 
neath marble columns surmounted by brazen epitaphs, are 
remembered no more. 

PneatH about JFtlanti. 

There was poetry in the death-scene of Filson, in the 
midst of the awful solitude of the "forest primeval," sol- 
emn with autumn's "sere and yellow leaf"; but only two 
of our poets with whose verses I am familiar have remem- 



qa John Filson: 

bered the event. W. D. Gallagher, who had laid the scene 
of his most elaborate poem in the "Miami Woods," could 
hardly have failed to note the death of Filson there. I 
have the manuscript of two unpublished stanzas he wrote 
about Filson, which are as follows: 

SHADOWS. 



Among the mist-dimmed memories 

That from the past come down, 
Is one of the brave John Filson 

And his survey for a town. 
Oh ! how he felt his bosom 

With emotions throb and thrill 
As, asleep or awake, in his dreamings 

He beheld Losantiville ! 
And down between the Miamis, 

With his compass and his chain, 
How he marked the ways of the Future, 

Which the Future sought in vain. 
Well has it been said, "What shadows 

We are, and what shadows pursue." 
Now we see them — and now we miss them- 

Forever, yet never in view. 



II. 



In the vigor of life, with a spirit 
That shrank from no duty imposed, 

John Filson's career as surveyor 
Between the Miamis closed. 



His Life and Writings. g r 



If pierced with an Indian arrow, 

Or if with a tomahawk slain, 
Or else, none knew, for the wild woods 

Were searched for him often in vain. 
To his memory, in Cincinnati, 

On a street was conferr'd his name; 
But e'en this was a fleeting tribute, 

For ere long a shadow came, 
(As shadow and shadow and shadow 

Forever and ever will come), 
And the brave and adventurous Filson 

Became and remained but a Plum. 



The statement in the last line of Mr. Gallagher's verses, 
that Filson became and remained but a Plum, is in allu- 
sion to the street named after him in Losantiville, which 
became Plum Street when Losantiville became Cincin- 
nati. The other poet who forgot not Filson was Prof. W. 
H. Venable, whose ballad, published in his "June on the 
Miami, and other Poems," in 1877, is given in the supple- 
ment to this article. 



pUlagri» after Jfeaih. 

So soon as death had put Filson out of the way those 
harpies that feed upon dead men's estates began their 
loathsome repast. His solemn contract, written, signed, 



o6 yohn Filson: 

sealed, and delivered with all the formalities of the bind- 
ing law, for one-third of the ground on which the great 
city of Cincinnati was afterward built, was set aside by 
his partners as if they had been the only objects of pro- 
tecting law, and all the rights of their dead equal had 
perished with him. His partners assumed that as he had 
paid no money on the contract and could render no serv- 
ices in death, his interest reverted to Denman; but we 
look in vain for any such conditions of forfeiture in the 
contract itself. Instead of sorrow for his tragical end 
and sympathy for his surviving representatives manifesting 
themselves in something like a show of justice, his in- 
heritance was seized by a cold avarice scarcely less sav- 
age than the hand that had taken his life. It is probable 
that those who robbed him of his estate in Losantiville 
really thought that death was an end of his covenant, and 
that they would have shrunk from the wrong they did 
if they had fully comprehended it; for their character in 
other things in life comports not with this act. In the 
suit of Ludlow's heirs against Kidd and Williams, hereto- 
fore referred to, it was stated and sworn to in the answer 
of the defendants that after Filson's death his trunks 
were ransacked and his papers destroyed for the purpose 
of vesting in another his interest in the Losantiville lands. 
After his death his share of these lands was transferred 



His Life and Writings. g 7 

to Israel Ludlow and away from his heirs forever without 
consulting, at the time of transfer, the living representa- 
tive any more than the dead proprietor. I am aware of 
the statement in the history of Cincinnati published by 
Mr. and Mrs. Ford in 1781 to the effect that a brother 
of John Filson was with the party of Kentuckians when 
he was killed, and that he informed the surviving partners 
that no claim would be set up by his legal representatives 
for his interest in the Losantiville venture. In my search 
for information concerning Filson, which has neither been 
short in time nor circumscribed in extent, I have found 
nothing to make me favor this statement in the Cincin- 
nati history, while I have come upon much to make me 
doubt its truth. There was but one brother of Filson 
who could have given his surviving partners any such 
assurance, and that was Robert Filson, the sole devisee 
and executor of his will. On the 28th of November, 1788, 
Robert Filson was in Chester County, Pennsylvania, where 
he had proven in court the will of his dead brother, and 
did not make his appearance in the West until the follow- 
ing year. He spent much of his time in Louisville, and 
owned a little farm of one hundred and twenty-five acres 
on Beech Creek, in Jefferson County, which he purchased 
of Benjamin Roberts. When he reached this region in 
1789, he found Ludlow in possession of his dead brother's 

13 



q8 yohn Filson : 

interest in Losantiville, with the strong arms of Patter- 
son and Denman ready to support him. As the prospect 
of ousting the usurper may not have seemed favorable, 
nor the property itself in its wild state been deemed of 
sufficient value to justify a contest for its recovery, it is 
not strange that the executor and devisee should have 
succumbed to the situation as he found it. He has, how- 
ever, been handed down to us by old citizens who knew 
him well as entertaining any but an approving view of 
the manner in which Ludlow got possession of his brother's 
interest in Losantiville. He was not given to swearing, 
but was reported by Gabriel J. Johnston, an early member 
of the Louisville bar, to have said of this transaction that 
no matter how it might be regarded in the Northwest 
Territory, it would be "counted dinged nigh robbin' in 
Pennsilvany." 

It is possible that the placing of a brother of Filson 
in the company of the Kentuckians at the time of his 
death, and making him disclaim any interest in Losanti- 
ville before Denman and Patterson took in Ludlow, as 
stated in the history of Cincinnati, came of a misinterpre- 
tation of the language used by Robert Patterson in his 
deposition in the case of the city of Cincinnati against 
Joel Williams in 1803. Some notes which I have from 
the papers in this suit do not make Patterson say that a 



His Life and Writings. gg 

brother of Filson was present, and thus acted at or im- 
mediately after his death. He does say, however, that a 
brother of Filson told him that as no money had been 
paid upon the purchase, no claim would be made for the 
interest of his dead brother. Patterson, however, does not 
fix the time when he was told this by the brother of Fil- 
son, so as to shut out the inference that it was after Lud- 
low had been accepted by him and Denman in the place 
of Filson. All the probabilities are in favor of Patterson's 
having been told this by Filson's brother after Ludlow had 
been accepted in the place of the dead partner; for if it 
had been otherwise Patterson would most likely have fixed 
the date of his getting this assurance before the arrange- 
ment with Ludlow, and distinctly have so stated it. 

On account of the burning of the early records of Vin- 
cennes, Ind., I have not been able to ascertain what be- 
came of Filson's lands in that region. In Kentucky, where 
he supposed he had laid the foundation of a large fortune 
in lands, his evil genius seems to have hovered over him 
in life and to have pursued his representatives after him. 
The subtleties of the law, which had been invoked by 
astute attorneys to get rid of the loose entries of the 
unsuspecting and careless pioneers in the books of the 
surveyors, bore heavily and disastrously upon the entries 
of Filson. All over the district warrant had been laid 



IO o "fohn Filson: 

upon warrant until in many places, where the lands were 
exceptionally good, they were three or four- fold deep; and 
in the merciless scramble of one for another's lands, the 
titles of Filson, without his presence to explain and en- 
force them, were swept away like chaff before the whirl- 
wind. In the county of Jefferson I have not been able to 
find that any deeds ever passed for the 1,500 acres he had 
bought of Squire Boone; and in Fayette the 12,368^ acres 
he had entered in the books of the surveyor do not seem 
to have brought to his devisee anything more than the 
poverty with which they afflicted Filson in his lifetime. 
When Filson's executor settled his estate in Kentucky 
and made his returns to the office from which letters of 
administration had been granted, his accounts showed that 
he had paid out in litigation and otherwise the sum of 
^280 6s. yd. more than he had received as assets. What 
a financial ending for the holder of 13,873^ acres of land 
in Kentucky, and one-third of the site on which the great 
city of Cincinnati was reared! 

Nothing Nantfo after Jftlaon. 

In the year 1802 Joel Williams, in compliance with the 
territorial law requiring it, filed in the register's office of 
Hamilton County a plat of "the town of Cincinnati, for- 



His Life and Writings. IO i 

merly called Losantiville." On this plat the present Plum 
Street of Cincinnati was laid down by the name of Filson 
Street. The same day, however, and at an earlier hour of 
that day, Israel Ludlow filed for record another plat of the 
town, on which there was no Filson Street, but on which 
the present Plum Street, which took the place of the Fil- 
son Street on the plat of Williams, was spelled Plumb — 
not so designed, of course, but nevertheless indicating the 
leaden line of policy by which the very name of Filson 
was to be obliterated from the new town. Each of the 
parties claimed that the plat he filed represented the orig- 
inal town; and if Williams' was an original, it was the 
wish of Filson that his name should be perpetuated in one 
of the streets of the town he had projected. If such was 
his hope, however, it was based on a supposed sense of 
justice in his associates and successors that was destined 
to a disappointment as ungrateful as the savage hand 
which deprived him of his life. 

Patterson and Denman, the partners of Filson, who 
were out of danger when he lost his life, have been hon- 
ored with two streets named after each of them; and Lud- 
low, who succeeded to the estate and the office which had 
cost Filson his life, has been honored by a bountiful no- 
menclature, with a street, an avenue, and an alley named 
after him. But what has the Queen City, the successor of 



IQ 2 yohn Filson: 

Losantiville, done for Filson, who first planted the Jacob 
staff upon her foundation, and sighted the first lines of 
her streets through the dense woods that covered it? Not 
even a hovelled alley, much less a business-bound street 
or palaced avenue, bears his name. Nothing has been 
done but ignore him, and worse than that, erase his name 
from a street that already bore it. If misfortune ever pur- 
sued the projector of a great city — in his name, in his prop- 
erty, and in his life — that projector was John Filson. 

Cincinnati, however, has been no more unmindful of 
one of her founders than Kentucky has of her first histo- 
rian and cartographer. Of all the rivers and creeks, moun- 
tains and hills, plains and valleys, counties and towns in 
Kentucky, not one is named after him who first described 
the country and recorded its early annals. Even of our 
blooded stock, for the names of which the heavens, the 
earth and the waters are searched from year to year, not 
one owner has thought of the name of Filson. He came 
upon our pioneer stage, played his part amid deserved 
plaudits, and disappeared behind the curtain never more to 
be recalled. Our Club has been the first to recognize the 
debt of gratitude that posterity owes him, by taking to 
itself the name of Filson, and it is to be hoped that the 
good example thus set may find imitators. 



His Life and Writings. 103 

iCtkeneaB of 3\\w\\. 

Unlike the gifted Macaulay, who, to excite new interest 
in his renowned subject, began his brilliant essay on the 
great Milton with an account of his long-lost and recently- 
found Latin work on Christian doctrine, I have reserved 
for the last a more humble book that once belonged to 
the less famous Filson, and which has become his chief 
relic by preserving his likeness and bringing it down to 
our times. It is an old-fashioned leather-bound volume of 
three hundred and sixteen small octavo pages, printed in 
London, in 1754, with the following quaint title-page: 

"Admonitions from the dead in epistles to the living ad- 
dressed by certain spirits of both sexes to their friends or 
enemies on earth with a view either to condemn or justify 
their conduct while alive and to promote the cause of religion 
and moral virtue." 

There are evidences in the wear and tear of this book 
that it was read by the owner. Some of the epistles, and 
especially that horrid one written by Miss Keppel from 
the spirit world and giving her mother an account of the 
treatment of her dead body in the dissecting-room, bear 
marks of having been read. So does the letter of Mad- 
ame Maintenon to Voltaire, that of Archbishop Tillotson 



ioa yohn Filson: 

to a late bishop, and that of the Duke of Buckingham to 
his mother. What Filson found to admire in these 
strangely conceived and not remarkably well executed 
epistles from the dead to the living I shall not attempt 
to determine, but the book was evidently a favorite of his. 
On the front fly-leaf is a miniature likeness of Filson, 
possibly drawn by himself with a pen, and preserved from 
injury by the accidental adhering of the leaf to the back of 
the book with the picture side folded under. Immediately 
beneath the picture is the signature of Filson, evidently 
written by himself, as it corresponds with his name to 
legal documents known to have been subscribed by him. 
When Filson was in Louisville he usually stayed at 
the house of Captain James Patten, whom he mentions in 
his will as his attorney at the Falls of the Ohio. Filson 
left this book at the house of Captain Patten, and after 
his death it began its wanderings to the book-shelves of 
other owners. William Marshall, who obtained it by inter- 
marriage with the widow of Captain Patten, transferred it 
to Dr. Charles Caldwell, after whose death it came to me 
from his estimable widow, who afterward married Judge 
Hunter and now resides at her country seat on the Bards- 
town Road in the vicinity of Louisville. It is not likely that 
it will again change ownership during the remaining few 
years that may be allotted to the present owner. 



His Life and Writings. L r 

Filson has not been flattered in the likeness by a face 
that would be pronounced either handsome or prepossess- 
ing. It is about as melancholy a countenance as one 
would find in a long search among the votaries of II Pen- 
seroso. Beneath an ample forehead, broad enough and 
high enough for intellect of no ordinary degree, are 
thoughtful if not dreamy eyes, a snub nose decisively 
marked, and a large mouth that would seem to sternly say 
it were a sin to smile. He appears bound up in the 
superabundant cravat, high-buttoned vest, and full collared 
coat of the era preceding the French Revolution, and looks 
as uncomfortable as a martyr to that fashion need have 
been. The likeness was evidently taken in his Sunday 
clothes, and tradition has said of him that he was exceed- 
ingly particular as to his dress and personal appearance. 
When he was in the woods he wore the homely costume 
of the early hunters, but when he listened to the three- 
or-four-hour sermon of a pioneer preacher, or attended 
the evening dance of the neighborhood, or sat at the 
dinner-table of "one of the quality" of the times, he was 
the seemingly suffering victim of the precise habiliments 
in which he was bound. He would be called a dandy in our 
day if arrayed for our times as he was for his. On the 
whole, while the picture does not represent him to have been 
as handsome or genial as we would have had the first 

14 



io6 yohn Filson. 

historian of Kentucky, we can not say that it is not the 
likeness of just such a man as would have written what 
Filson wrote and done what Filson did during the six 
short years that he was in this region. An exact copy of 
this likeness, from a plate, engraved for the purpose, forms 
the frontispiece to this article; and if, in this attempt to 
collect and preserve information concerning him whose 
image the picture preserves, I have rescued from oblivion 
any facts that ought not to have perished, and directed the 
attention of those whom it may concern to a worthy author 
too long neglected, the full measure of my wishes will 
have been accomplished, and I shall regard the effort 
as a fitting commemoration of the one hundredth anni- 
versary of the publication of his history and his map of 
Kentucky. 



APPENDIX. 























jh| 




'i 

i 




U | : 




■ 










ST 






BHhh 


Jm- 






i 


Hi 






. 






! 


mk 




'' I 'l^ 4 


i 



Colonel R. T. DURRETT 
President of The Filson Club since organization 



APPENDIX. 



WILL OF JOHN FILSON. 

The following is a copy of the will of John Filson, the 
grandfather of the author of the first history and map of 
Kentucky. It is taken from the original at Westchester, 
Penn., where it was proven in court and ordered to record 
April 29, 1 75 1. I have not felt at liberty to correct the 
spelling, the grammar, nor any other error, however ap- 
parent, but give the document as I find it, with whatever 
faults of composition it may have: 

I John Felson of Fallowfield Township in Chester County, Pennsilvania, 
being very sick and Weack in body, but of sound and disposoing mind and memory, 
Do make and ordain this my last Will and Testament, that is to say, principally 
and first of all I give and renounce mye Soul, into the hand of God, that gave 
it, and for my Body I recommend it to the Earth to be Buried in a Christian 
Like and decent mannor at the discretion of Executors, and as touching such 
worldly Estate, wherewith it hath pleased God to bless me in this life, I give, 
devise and dispose of the same in the following mannor and form, My will is, 
that first of all my debts and f unerall Charges be paid and Satisfied : 






no 



Appendix. 



Imprimis: I give and Bequeath unto Jane my Beloved wife one half of 
my new dwelling house which part shee shall think proper, and her bed and 
beding, and such further furniture in the house as shee shall have need of, and 
Likewise a sufncently of Breas meal, for her own use, and two Cows and a Rising 
horse, and their keeping Winter and Summer one the plantation I now dwell 
one at the praper Cost and Charges of my son Davison, and Likewise, fire wood 
Cut and brought to the dore sufficiant for one fire at my son's cost, which privi- 
ledge, she shall enjoy duroing her naturall life, and at her deceased, what she 
Leaves shall be given to my son Davison to his only proper use forever. 

Item: I give to my beloved Son Davison whome with my son John. I con- 
stitute my executor of this my Last Will and Testament, all and singular the Lands 
Messuages and Tenements, by him freely to be posessed and enjoyed by him 
his heirs and assigns forever, being the place whereone I now dwell, Containing 
by Estimation two hundred acres be it more or less, But in Case he should without 
Issue, then the said Messuage or Plantation shall be sold, and the value of it 
shall be Euqually divided to all my Children, except my wife's previledge which 
shall still remain to her as aforesaid. 

Item: I give to my son William Felson Ten Shillings to be Levied out of 
my Estate. 

Item: I give to my daughter Margaret two cows. 

Item: I give Martha Peoples, a two year old heifer, if she remain in my 
house at my death. 

Item: I give to my three Grandsons John, and two Robert Felsons each of 
them a pocet bible, to be procured by my executors. 

Item: My will is that after all my debts and funerall Charges, be paid and 
satisfied, with those above mentioned Legacies, that the rest of my personall 
Estate shall be Equally divided between my two sons John, and Davison part 
and share alike, John paying his Mother three pounds a year, Yearly and every 
year dureing her naturall life, if demanded. And I doe Constitute and ordain 
John Filson and Davison Felson, to be my Executors of this my Last will and 



Appendix. 



in 



Testament Utterly disallowing and revoking all and every other Wills Testaments, 
Legacies and executors by me in any way before this time named. Willed and 
Bequeathed, Ratifying and confirming this and no other to be my Last Will and 
Testament. 

In Witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and seal this 3rd day of 
September in the year 1748. 

JOHN FELSON. (seal] 



WILL OF DAVISON FILSON. 

The following is an exact copy of the last will and 
testament of Davison Filson, the father of the first his- 
torian and cartographer of Kentucky. The original is 
on file at Westchester, Pennsylvania, where it was proven 
in court and ordered to be recorded August 23, 1776. 
As in the case of his father's will, I have made no alter- 
ations, but given the bad spelling, bad grammar, etc., as 
I found them. Testators in dying conditions don't have 
much thought about the elegance of composition, and 
all of them can't attain it even if it enters their thoughts; 
but it should be borne in mind by those who undertake 
to improve upon the general distribution of estates as 
made by law, that some regard should be paid to the 
English language as well as other things. The law 
makes a very good will and does it in good English, 



112 Appendix. 

and those who undertake to make a better should not 
do so by violating the ordinary rules of the spelling-book 
and grammar: 

In the naim of God Amen the seckeent day of August in the year 1776 I Davi- 
son Filson of Eaist Follofild in Chester County and Province of Pencelvania, 
yeoman, being weak in Boddey but of sound mind & memory do make this my 

last Will & Testament in manner Following 

Imprimes: I Bequeath my soul to God who gave it, & my body to the dust 
to be decently Interred at the discretion of my Excu's: 

Itim: after payment of all my just debtes and Funerall expences, I Bequeath 
to my beloved Wife Agness Filson hir Bed and Bed clothes, with one hors and 

sadle and one Cow 

Itime: I Bequeath unto my beloved son John Filson two Cows out of my 
Esteat — along with the Land he gat by deed from me and no more, onley the two 
first Bonds he give me for the Land, is to be forgiven him, which is Fiftey Pounds, 
and the next Fiftey Pounds my son John is to pay it to my two doughters, Ann 
Filson & Ellenor Filson when their com of age, which will be Twenty-five Pounds 

to ech of them 

Itime: I alow my beloved doughter Ann Filson the Bed & Bead-Cloths in 

the Beack Room 

Itime: I alow my beloved dougher Elenor Filson the Chist of draers in the 

Beack Room 

Itim: I alow Ann Filson & Elenor Filson ech of them one Cow and two yous 
out of my Esteate — 

Itime: I Bequeath unto my beloved son Robert Filson one Bead and one 
Cow, and his pick of one Hors out of my Esteat along with his Land I mead him 
by Leas and no more. 

Itim: I alow the pleace I bought of William Filson to be sold all but the 
Fiftey acors I made over to my son Robert Filson to pay the debt that is upon it 
and the remender of it to be equely devided between my dougher Ann Filson, 



Appendix. 



ll 3 



Elenor Filson, Mosis Filson, Jean Filson, Elisabeth Filson, & the last one bourn 
and not naimed ase yeat and the mother to have hir shear of the saim 

Mm: After all my just debts and Legocys before menchened be paid & 
settesfyed. I alow that the remender of my parsenal esteat be sold and equely 
be devided betwen my belovid wife & Ann Filson Elenor Filson, Mosis Filson 
Jean Filson Elisabeth Filson and the last bourn Child on naimed part and shear 

alike 

Itime: I alow my wif to live with my son Robert one year after my death 
and no more — without the cean agray longer. 
Itime: I alow my son Mosis to go to a tread — 

Finally, I apoint and ordain my son— John Filson and my son Robert Filson 
to rase keep and mintan and scool my two doughters Jean Filson and Elisabeth 
Filson till the are of age. 

Itime: I confes the Land I bought of James Harlen is to be Bettey Ring's 
after she pays John Pasmore the money he hes against mee — 

Finaly, I apoint & ordain my beloved son Robert Filson and my beloved 
frend William Grant to be the executers of this my last Will and Testament, 
Revoking & disinuling aney other person or persons from having aney Right 
by birthrit and all other Wills and Testaments by me heretofore made and pub- 
lished Ratifing this ase my last Will ase Witness my hand and sail the day and 
year above ritten. 

DAVISON FILSON. [seal.] 



ENTRY OF FIVE THOUSAND ACRES 
OF LAND. 

The following is a copy of the first land entry made 
by John Filson in the register of Col. Thomas Marshall, 
surveyor of Fayette County, Ky. : 

15 



1 14. Appendix. 



John Filson assee of Clem Moore Enteres 5000 acres of Land on part of a 
Treasury Warrant No 19606 lying on the waters of ohio and about 10 or 11 miles 
Eastward of the big Bone Lick. Beginning at the northeastward corner of an 
Entry made in the name of Benjamin Netherland for 7000 acres and running 
north with the lines of older Entries 1200 poles and also from said Beginning 
south 20 west with Netherlands line to the line of an Entry made in the name of 
James Lyle Jr for 500 acres, thence South 70 East to the corner of said Entry, 
then and also from the Termination of the line of 1200 poles East for quantity. 
Deer 19th 1783. 



ENTRY OF FORTY-NINE HUNDRED AND 
TWENTY-TWO ACRES OF LAND. 

The following is a copy of the second land entry made 
by John Filson in the register of Col. Thomas Marshall, 
surveyor of Fayette County: 

John Filson assee &c Enteres 4922 acres of Land on the ballance of a Treasury 
Warrant No 19606 lying about 5 or 6 miles from the ohio River, Beginning at the 
most West corner of an Entry made in the name of Humphrey Marshall for 3,000 
acres and runing from, thence and with the line of Said Entry South 40 East 
and continuing the Same course 800 poles, thence and from the Beginning running 
South 50 West so far that a line runing from the Termination of one to the other 
and parallel to the line of 800 poles will include the quantity Deer 19th 1783. 



Appendix. n r 



ENTRY OF TWENTY-FOUR HUNDRED AND 
FORTY-SIX ACRES OF LAND. 

The following is a copy of the third land entry made 
by John Filson in the Register of Colonel Thomas Mar- 
shall, surveyor of Fayette County: 

John Filson, assee, Enteres 2446^ acres on two Treasury Warrants one Be- 
longing to John Boyd No. 14,934, the other assigned to John Filson No. 10,758 as 
tenant adjoining on the northerly side with said Boyd about 10 or 11 miles south 
of Ohio River, beginning at the most westerly corner of an entry of John Filson's 
thence by the line of said Entry of 4922 acres south 40 East and continuing the 
same course 625 poles, thence and from the beginning south 50 west 626 poles or. 
so far that a line running parallel to the former will include the quantity Deer 
20th 1783. 



FILSON'S BOND FOR A DEED TO 
HENRY. 

The following is a copy of the bond for a deed made 
by John Filson in favor of Daniel Henry, and recorded 
in the Clerk's Office of Jefferson County, in Louisville, Ky. : 

Know all men by these presents, that I, John Filson, of Jefferson County, 
and Commonwealth of Virginia, am held and firmly bound unto Daniel Henry, 
merchant of the same place, in the just and full sum of two thousand pounds 
lawful money of Virginia, to be paid unto the said Daniel Henry, his heirs, execu- 



1 1 6 Appendix. 



tors, administrators, or assigns, to the which payment well and truly to be made 
and done I bind myself, my heirs, Ex'r's and administrators firmly by these 
presents, sealed with my seal and dated this fourteenth day of October, one 
thousand seven hundred and eighty five. 

The condition of the above obligation is such that if the above bounden 
John Filson, his heirs, executors, or administrators, or either of them do or shall 
well and truly make over, a good sure and indefeasable Estate of Inheritance 
in Fee Simple of in and to a certain tract of land, lying and being situate upon 
the west branch of Brandywine Creek about two miles south of the Gap road in 
East fallowfield Township, Chester County, and Commonwealth of Pennsyl- 
vania, containing two hundred and forty acres, free and clear off and from all 
and all manner of Incumbrances, and demands whatsoever, against the first 
day of April in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven unto 
the above mentioned Daniel Henry, his heirs, executors, administrators or assigns 
together with full possession, of the aforesaid premises against the first day of 
April next ensuing the date hereof and that without any Let hindrance, Inter- 
ruption or Disturbance of the aforesaid John Filson, his heirs or assigns or any 
other person or persons whatsoever, then the above obligation to be void and 
of none effect, otherwise remain in full force and virtue in law. 

JOHN FILSON. [sEal.1 

Signed, sealed, and delivered in the presence of 

David Morgan, 

Benjamin Earickson, 

Daniel Buckley, 

Martin Carney, 

John Williams, 

James Morrison. 

Jefferson Set. November Court, 1785. 

The foregoing Bond was duly acknowledged in open court and admitted to 

record. Teste: 

WILL JOHNSTON, Clerk. 



Appendix. uy 



PROPOSED SCHOOL IN LEXINGTON. 

On the 19th of January, 1788, the following article, writ- 
ten by Filson, advocating the establishment of a seminary 
at Lexington, was published in the Kentucky Gazette, a 
weekly newspaper then printed there by John Bradford. 
The article led to a comical as well as a serious corre- 
spondence, as will appear by what followed: 



The public has been informed that a seminary is proposed in Lexington. 
In consultation of the respectable inhabitants upon that subject, there appeared 
a proper spirit of encouragement: every gentleman present was suitably im- 
pressed with the importance of the plan, and seriously wished the accomplish- 
ment. Many valuable advantages will probably arise from this institution, as 
the situation will be popular and healthy, in the center of a fertile country, where 
accomodations for students may be had at the lowest rates. The teachers are 
determined to pay the strictest attention to their pupils, and hope their success 
will merit encouragement. With the discipline of northern teachers to suppress 
every species of vice and immorality, and give the greatest encouragement to 
the fruit and practice of virtue, party spirit will be exploded, and to instruct in 
the general system of Christianity only, considered as their indispensable duty. 

The ideas of mankind with respect to the seats of education are various, 
some prefer a town or city, others the country; the latter, viewing the many 
temptations youths are exposed to in towns, and supposing they are fewer in 
the country, think that the most eligible: however probable this may appear, 
yet experience proves that a being, determined on folly, will find as many oppor- 



1 1 8 Appendix. 



tunities in the country, as in town, with the addition of a greater secresy in 
accomplishing his designs : many mean and vicious practices can be effected, 
which in a public situation the unavoidable idea of detection would effectually 
prevent; this obvious from a view of a country student walking out of school, 
he carelessly hulks his body along in clownish gestures, pays no respect to a 
genteel movement, from a consciousness that no eye beholds him, fears not the 
contempt or ridicule which must be consequent upon such a conduct in a respect- 
able town, or if in a public situation indecorum should pass unnoticed by all, 
but the teachers, then is the most pertinent season for admonitions, when the 
culprit must be sensible upon the smallest observation of the ruinous conse- 
quences to all character and future reputation, which he must unavoidably sus- 
tain. I conceive the voice of thunder could not make more serious impressions. 
Experience beyond doubt will confirm these observations. 

The advantage of knowing mankind also, which those in a recluse situation 
can not, and after a series of time, except their studies, are mere infants, and fre- 
quently upon their first approach into public life, by awkwardness, blast all 
their future fame ; the contrary is evident with the young gentleman educated in 
public life, by frequently viewing the deformity of vice, he naturally abhors it, 
especially where it is treated with contempt; with the knowledge of science he 
becomes acquainted with human nature, has a proper idea of the world, and by 
the time his studies are accomplished is the gentleman as well as the scholar. 

This investigation may extend to every country, at present it is designed 
for Kentucky, in which it is sufficient to say Lexington is not the least in account 
for this situation. 

The tuition will be five pounds per annum, one half cash the other property, 
good boarding, washing and lodging may be had about one mile from town for 
twenty or thirty at nine pounds per year, and that in property, and in case of 
providing a bed the boarding will be eight pounds for each one. Those who wish 
to secure lodgings will apply to Mr. Barr and Mr. Coburn in Lexington for 
information. 



Appendix. 



i ii 



The education will commence some time in April, and the French language 
will be taught, with all the arts and sciences used in academies. In the beginning 
of April all students will apply for entrance, as I shall be constantly in Lexington 
from that time. I am, with respect, the public's obedient humble servant. 

JOHN FILSON. 



AGRICOLA'S REPLY TO FILSON. 

On the 8th of March, 1788, the following sarcastic and 
unexpected reply to Filson's article on the proposed semi- 
nary appeared in the Kentucky Gazette: 

To Mr. Filson: 

Sir : As I am a citizen of Kentucky and have a number of children to educate 
it gives me a great deal of pleasure to see schools rising so thick in various parts 
of the district. How happy for this infant country that we have so many gentle- 
men of learning and abilities, who are ready to take our youth by the hand and 
lead them through the whole circle of arts and sciences, at so moderate an expense. 
Only a few months ago I was puzzled to find a proper school for my sons : now the 
scene is changed, and I seem equally embarrassed to know which seminary to 
prefer. 

At one time I had concluded to suffer my boys to drink at the Royal Springs, 
and try the efficacy of that wondrous font; but, being a very staunch whig, I 
hate even the name of royal, though applied to the waters of Parnassus. I 
then turned my attention to Lexington school, and was about putting my sons 
under the tuition of the former professor of Philadelphia college, but before 
this could be accomplished an ingenious production from some of the promising 
youths of Jessamine seemed to press me to send them to that celebrated seat of 
the Muses. 



1 20 Appendix. 



However, Sir, upon a careful revisal of your late production and seriously 
weighing the matter in my own mind, I have at length come to a fixed resolution 
to keep my boys at home until your academy is opened. For of all plans of educa- 
tion hitherto offered to the public yours certainly bears the palm, and promises 
the most extensive utility. Your design is great and important. To unite the 
scholar, the gentleman and the Christian all in one, is the supreme, the ultimate 
end of science. Indeed a design like this will stamp divinity on your institution, 
success to philosophy, and raise humanity to a consummation which every good 
man must devoutly wish. And in this view of it, I have the pleasure to inform 
you that all my acquaintances are charmed, are delighted with the institution, 
and determined to give it every encouragement. And, as we feel so deeply 
interested in this institution, we wish to know more of it, and fully to understand 
every syllable that has dropped from your learned pen concerning it. 

But, here, Sir, we labor under an unhappy disadvantage. In my neighbor- 
hood all are illiterate, and unaccustomed to high, flowery language or abstruse 
reasoning. Your sentiments are, many of them, so new, your style is so lofty, 
your periods are so lengthy and crowded with such a variety of matter, your 
conclusions are often so remote from their premises, and relatives quite out of 
sight of their antecedents, that we are totally left in the maze, and the longest 
line of our understandings are not able to fathom the depth of such erudition. 
I have therefore, by the desire of my neighbors, flung those parts of your adver- 
tisement that we could not understand into a few questions. As 

1. What is meant by the word popular, as applied to the situation of your 
intended academy? 

2. Is it necessary that your scholars should travel a mile every day, in all 
weather, in order to find boarding at eight or nine pounds a year? 

3. Are youth who receive their education in populous cities generally more 
virtuous than such as have a private education? 

4. What peculiar charms have northern teachers to inspire virtue, suppress 
vice, and explode all party spirit, that southern teachers do not possess? 



Appendix. 



121 



5. What is the meaning of the verb hulk? 

6. Are young ladies, educated in the country, guilty of the sin— of hulking? 
This question comes from the fair sex themselves, who have taken the alarm. 

They fully believe that the crime of hulking, which you have so indiscriminately 
charged upon their brothers, is a rude stroke of satire, indirectly aimed at them. 
Take heed, good Sir; 'tis death to provoke the Fair. 

Lastly, for the benefit of such as can not give their children a public educa- 
tion, be pleased to point out that peculiar moment, that particular nick of time 
when admonition, like a thunderbolt, shall knock a hulking boy out of his "awk- 
ward gestures" into a "genteel movement." 

By giving a plain, easy solution to these questions, you will, sir, much oblige 
many of your well-wishers, and, with the rest, your most obedient and humble 
servant, 

AGRICOLA. 



FILSON'S REJOINDER TO AGRICOLA. 

On the 19th of April, 1788, the following rejoinder of 
Filson to Agricola was published in the Kentucky Gazette: 

To Agricola: 

You have taken the liberty to animadvert upon the publication of the in- 
tended Seminary, proposing a few silly and impertinent questions, which I shall 
take no notice of. Your officious performance Reflects no reputation, indicating 
a Spirit of altercation, which in every attitude I view with contempt. As you 
have been so personal with me, you will please to leave your name with the Printer, 
and oblige 

JOHN FILSON. 
16 



12 2 Appendix. 



AGRICOLA'S SURREJOINDER TO FILSON. 

On the 17th of May, 1788, the following surrejoinder 
of Agricola to Filson appeared in the Kentucky Gazette, 
and closed the correspondence so far as is known, as noth- 
ing further appeared in the paper: 

To Mr. Filson, Sir: 

You have taken the liberty to animadvert upon the (viz. my) publication 
of the intended seminary, proposing a silly and impertinent question, which I 
shall take no notice of. Your officious performance reflects no reputation, indi- 
cating a spirit of altercation, which in every attitude I view with contempt. 

AGRICOLA. 



EXTRACT FROM THE ANSWER OF KIDD 
AND WILLIAMS. 

In March, 181 1, Jacob Burnet, as attorney for the heirs 
at law of Israel Ludlow, filed in the Court of Common 
Pleas, in Cincinnati, a petition against John Kidd and 
Joel Williams for the recovery of Lot No. 401. The 
petition ignored John Filson as one of the founders of 
Cincinnati, and also ignored Losantiville as being the 
predecessor of Cincinnati; and began Cincinnati with its 
own name as laid out by Israel Ludlow. On the 25th 



Appendix. 121 

of July, 181 1, E. Glover, as attorney for John Kidd and 
Joel Williams, filed an answer in which Filson was put 
forth as the original layer-out of the town of Losantiville, 
and Losantiville as the predecessor of Cincinnati. From 
this answer of Kidd and Williams the following extracts 
are taken concerning Filson: 

On the 25th day of August, 1788, he, the said Matthias Denman, entered 
into a contract in writing under his hand and seal with the said Robert Patterson 
named in the complainant's bill and one John Filson, then of Lexington, Fayette 
County, and State of Kentucky, but who is since deceased, whereby the said 
Matthias did grant, bargain, and sell the full two thirds part of said six hundred 
and forty acres to be located by virtue of the aforesaid warrant by an equal 
undivided right in partnership to the said Robert Patterson and John Filson, 
their heirs and assigns, and the said Matthias, Robert, and John did, by said 
agreement, covenant with each other that every other institution, determination, 
and regulation respecting the laying off of a town and establishing a ferry at and 
upon the premises should be the result of the united advice and consent of the 
parties in covenant as aforesaid. By virtue of which said contract the said John 
Filson became entitled to an equal undivided third part of all the right and title 
of him the said Matthias, the said Robert to one other third part thereof, and the 
remaining third part was retained by the said Matthias as a tenant in common 
with the said John and Robert. . . . And these defendants further state that they 
are informed and believe that after the aforesaid contract had been made between 
the said Denman, Patterson, and Filson, they agreed to lay out a town upon 
the premises, and on or about the 22d day of September, in the year 1788, they, 
the said Denman, Patterson, and Filson, landed on the ground where Cincinnati 
now stands, and on the following day commenced surveying some of the lines 
and streets of said town and then and there agreed upon the site thereof as the 
same has since been laid out, to which they then gave the name of Losantiville. . . . 



1 24 Appendix. 



And these defendants further state that sometime in or about the month of Octo- 
ber, in the year 1788, the said John Filson was killed by the Indians in defense of 
the Miami country. And they further aver that the said John Filson did not 
at any time prior to his death sell or in any manner dispose of his right purchased 
from the said Matthias as aforesaid, or any part thereof, either to the said Israel 
Ludlow or any other person, but that he died possessed of all the right he had 
acquired by virtue of the aforesaid contract with the said Matthias whereupon 
all the right and title of the said John Filson descended and became vested in 
his heirs at law who, as these defendants are informed and believe, reside in some 
of the Eastern States. And these defendants further state that shortly after 
the death of the said John Filson the said Matthias Denman, Robert Patterson, 
and Israel Ludlow entered into a combination, as these defendants are informed 
and believe, to defraud the heirs of the said John Filson of the right he had ac- 
quired in his lifetime by virtue of the before mentioned contract with the said 
Matthias. And for the purpose of effecting and concealing their unjust and 
fraudulent designs, after having ransacked his trunks and destroyed such of his 
papers as they could find, they agreed with each other that the said Israel should 
appear to the world and act as proprietor of all that part of the said premises 
which belonged to said John at the time of his death ; and that he should proceed 
in all respects in the same manner as if the said Israel had in fact been the pur- 
chaser from the said Denman in the place and stead of the said John. And in 
pursuance of said unjust, wicked and fraudulent combination, the said Israel 
did usurp the right which belonged to the said John Filson at the time of his death, 
and did act as proprietor of one third part of the said premises, and they and each 
of them did conceal and deny the right of the said John Filson and did hold out 
the said Israel as an equal proprietor with the said Matthias and Robert, whereas 
in truth the said Israel had no right or title in the premises, but the same belonged 
to the said Filson at the time of his death as herein before stated. 



Appendix. 



I2 5 



EXTRACT FROM PATTERSON'S DEPOSITION. 

In the case of Ludlow's heirs against Kidd & Williams, 
Robert Patterson, one of the original proprietors and part- 
ners of Filson, gave his deposition January 6, 1814, from 
which the following extract is taken concerning Filson: 

Matthias Denman purchased of John C Symmes a section and fraction oppo- 
site the mouth of Licking, containing somewhere about 710 acres, and admitted 
this deponent and one Filson as partners in said purchase ; that they agreed to 
lay out a town on said tract shortly afterwards, and before the town was laid off 
Filson was killed by the Indians ; that he never had advanced or paid any money 
for his proportion of said tract either to Symmes or Denman, and after his death 
Israel Ludlow was by the consent of the other proprietors admitted an equal 
partner in said purchase. 



VENABLE'S BALLAD ON FILSON. 

The following ballad was written by W. H. Venable, 
principal of the Chickering Institute at Cincinnati, and 
appeared in his book, entitled "June on the Miami, and 
other Poems," published at Cincinnati in 1877: 

JOHN FILSON. 

John Filson was a pedagogue, 

A pioneer was he; 
I know not what his nation was, 

Nor what his pedigree. 



126 Appendix. 



Tradition's scanty records tell 

But little of the man, 
Save that he to the frontier came 

In immigration's van. 

Perhaps with phantoms of reform 

His busy fancy teemed; 
Perhaps of new Utopias 

Hesperian he dreamed. 

John Filson and companions bold 

A frontier village planned, 
In forest wild, on sloping hills, 

By fair Ohio's strand. 

John Filson from three languages 

With pedant skill did frame 
The novel word Losantiville 

To be the new town's name. 

Said Filson, "Comrades, hear my words — 
Ere threescore years have flown 

Our town will be a city vast." 
Loud laughed Bob Patterson. 

Still John exclaimed, with prophet tongue, 

"A city fair and proud, 
The Queen of Cities in the West " ! 

Mat. Denman laughed aloud. 

Deep in the wild and solemn woods, 
Unknown to white man's track, 

John Filson went one autumn day, 
But never more came back. 



Appendix. 127 



He struggled through the solitude 

The inland to explore, 
And with romantic pleasure trac'd 

Miami's winding shore. 

Across his path the startled deer 
Bounds to its shelter green, 

He enters every lonely vale 
And cavernous ravine. 

Too soon the murky twilight comes, 
The night wind 'gins to moan; 

Bewildered wanders Filson, lost, 
Exhausted, and alone. 

By lurking foes his steps are dogged; 

A yell his ear appalls ! 
A ghastly corpse upon the ground, 

A murdered man he falls. 

The Indian, with instinctive hate, 

In him a herald saw 
Of coming hosts of pioneers, 

The friends of light and law; 

In him beheld the champion 

Of industries and arts, 
The founder of encroaching roads 

And great commercial marts; 

The spoiler of the hunting-ground, 

The plower of the sod, 
The builder of the Christian school 

And of the house of God. 



1 28 Appendix. 



And so the vengeful tomahawk 
John Filson's blood did spill — 

The spirit of the pedagogue 
No tomahawk could kill. 

John Filson had no sepulcher, 
Except the wild wood dim; 

The mournful voices of the air 
Made requiem for him. 

The druid trees their waving arms 

Uplifted o'er his head; 
The moon a pallid vail of light 

Upon his visage spread. 

The rain and sun of many years 
Have worn his bones away, 

And what he vaguely prophesied 
We realize to-day. 

Losantiville, the prophet's word, 
The poet's hope, fulfills — 

She sits a stately Queen to-day 
Amid her royal hills. 

Then come, ye pedagogues, and join 

To sing a graceful lay 
For him the martyr pioneer 

Who led for you the way. 

And may my simple ballad be 

A monument to save 
His name from blank oblivion 

Who never had a grave. 



Appendix. I2 g 



THE FIRST LOT-OWNERS IN CINCINNATI. 

The interval was so long between the initial steps of 
Filson in laying out Cincinnati, under the name of Lo- 
santiville, in September, 1788, and the first distribution of 
lots under Ludlow, in January, 1789, that the friends of 
Filson, who expected to become settlers under his plan, 
may not have acquired lots. And yet there are good rea- 
sons for believing that the lots acquired by the first own- 
ers in the city of Cincinnati differed but little, if any, from 
those that Filson had marked out in his original plan of 
Losantiville. Even Judge Burnet, who insisted on having 
Filson dead before a chain was stretched upon the site 
of Losantiville, and always spoke of the forfeiture of his 
interest in that town on account of his death and the 
non-payment of the purchase-money as a matter of course, 
without the least regard to the conditions of his written 
contract, gave good testimony through another witness as 
to the similarity between Filson's plan of Losantiville and 
Ludlow's plan of Cincinnati — the main difference con- 
sisting in Filson's plan giving more ground for public use 
than Ludlow's gave. Here is what the judge said in his 
letter of October 5, 1844, published in Cist's Cincinnati 
Miscellany: 

17 



130 Appendix. 

I was informed by Judge Turner, one of the earliest adventurers to the West, 
that he had seen both plats, and that the general outline and plan of division 
were nearly the same in both, but that the first or Filson plat, to which the name 
of Losantiville was to have been given, set aside two entire blocks for the use 
of the town, and that it gave as a public common all the ground between front 
street and the river extending from Eastern Row to Western Row, then the 
extreme boundaries of the town plat ; and it is impressed upon my mind, though 
I can not say what caused that impression, that on the first or Filson plat Front 
Street was laid down nearer to the river or made more southing in its course 
westward than we find it on the plat of Cincinnati. I was also informed that some 
of the names which had been selected for streets of the Losantiville plan were 
given to streets on the plan of Cincinnati, and that others were rejected. 

The presumption can not be regarded as violent, there- 
fore, that the first owners of lots in the great city of Cin- 
cinnati acquired them as they had been originally laid out 
by Filson in his plan of Losantiville. Believing that such 
was the fact, and that the pledge of Filson, in the pros- 
pectus of August 30, 1788, to give thirty half-acre lots and 
thirty four-acre lots to the first settlers was thus redeemed, 
I subjoin a list of the in-lots and the out-lots acquired 
on the 7th of January, 1789, with the names of the owners: 

THE OUT-LOTS OF FOUR ACRES EACH. 

No. 1, James Carpenter, No. 4, Ephraim Kibby, 

2, John Porter, 5, James McConnell, 

3, Joel Williams, 6, David McClure, 



Appendix. 



*3* 



• 7, 


Harry Lindsay, 


No. 19, 


Davison, 


8, 


Matthew Cammel, 


20, 


Isaac Freeman, 


9, 


Scott Traverse, 


21, 


James Cammel, 


10, 


Jonas Menfer, 


22, 


Noah Badgley, 


II, 


James Dument, 


23- 


Jesse Fulton, 


12, 


Archibald Stewart, 


24, 


John Vance, 


13. 


Luther Kitchel, 


25, 


Benjamin Dument, 


14, 


Samuel Mooney, 


26, 


Elijah Martin, 


15- 


Sylvester White, 


27, 


Daniel Shoemaker, 


16, 


Henry Buchtel, 


28, 


Joseph Thornton, 


17, 


Thomas Gizzel, 


29, 


Samuel Blackburn, 


18, 


Isaac Vanmeter, 


30, 


Jesse Stewart, 



31, William McMillan. 



THE IN-LOTS OF HALF AN ACRE EACH. 



No. I, Samuel Blackburn, 

2, Sylvester White, 

3, Robert Caldwell, 

4, John Vance, 

5, James Dument, 

6, Jesse Fulton, 

7, Elijah Martin, 

8, Isaac Vanmeter, 

9, Thomas Gizzel, 



No. 26, Joshua McClure, 
27, Davison, 

28, Nathaniel Rolstein, 

29, Jonas Menfer, 

30, James McConnell, 

31, Noah Badgley, 

32, James Carpenter, 

33, Samuel Mooney, 

34, James Cammel, 



i g 2 Appendix. 

No. 51, Isaac Freeman, No. 57, Archibald Stewart, 

52, Scott Traverse, 58, Luther Kitchel, 

53, Enoch McHenry, 59, Ephraim Kibby, 

54, Jesse Stewart, 76, Harry Lindsay, 
56, Henry Bechtel, 77, John Porter, 

[ Daniel Shoemaker, 
[ Joel Williams. 

DEPOSITION OF COL. PATTERSON. 

It was my purpose to insert in this appendix the depo- 
sition given by Col. Robert Patterson, in December, 1803, 
in the suit brought by the city of Cincinnati against Joel 
Williams for the recovery of the old Losantiville common. 
This deposition, however, could not be found among the 
records, in their confused state, as rescued from the late 
fire which destroyed the Cincinnati court-house, and it is 
possible that the original perished in the flames. The 
view I have presented of what passed between Col. Pat- 
terson and a brother of John Filson concerning the Filson 
interest in the Losantiville lands is based upon notes made 
from this deposition years ago. I may add, however, that 
a comparison of my notes with some made from the same 
deposition by Mr. John D. Caldwell, of Cincinnati, a very 
accurate collector, shows perfect agreement in every im- 
portant particular. 



, : 3Q 



